
Class _jSY^£Sbi 
Book ,PyjL<rL_^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Little Guidepofls 
in the Way to Life 



IS? tfie ^ame Mul^ov 




The Life Worth While . . . 


$100 


The Alt o( Enjoying the Bible 


100 


The Bright Side of Humanity — 




Half Morocco .... 


200 


iXCoTOCCO 


300 


Superintendent's Book of Prayer . 


50 


Dwight L. Moody .... 


100 


Half ^ICorocco .... 


1 50 


Letters to a Sunday-School Teacher 


100 


In Preparation 





Copyright 1907 by 

Rob€rt Harding Company, Ine, 



»t w ■ ■■ ■ ■■ ■■■■■■■■■■■■ m rf 



g Little GuidepoSs 
I in the Way to Life 



a 
a 



a 
a 



By I I 

EDWARD LEIGH PELL i 




Richmond, Virginia 



Robert Harding Company | a 

Incorporated 



I J^ m w rnm. . m.. m ■ . L ^ ^ | 

?ii«----»uu«>>»i»iitt««--»uii«-«ii»iiu«--iii»U4» 



TuBRARY of CONgJIeSS 
I Two Copies Keceiveu 

DEC 21 1907 

Copyri^ftl tntry 
ICLASSA XXc. NO. 

'copy b. 






Contentst 



Page 
- 7 



I — ^The One Sure Guide - - 
II — Getting First Questions 

Settled - - - ~ - lo 
III— The Rule of Life - - 20 
IV — The Secret of True Suc- 
cess 2y 

V — Waiting for Orders - - 32 

VI — Coming to a' Point - - 41 

VII— Taking God at His Word 47 
VIII — A Good Prescription for 

the Journey - - - - 54 

IX— A Bad Start - - - - 58 

X — Letting Jesus Help Us - 64 

XI— The Bread of Life - - 69 

XII — Knowing the Lord - - 74 

XIII — Making the Most of Our 

Talents ----- 79 

XIV — Taking Hazardous Risks 83 



Page 

XV— Escaping the World's 

Magnetism - - - - 88 

XVI— The Fear of Being Dif- 
ferent ------ 92 

XVII— The Tyrant Appetite - 95 
XVIII— When Reason is De- 
throned ---... loi 
XIX— The ManHest Thing - - 106 
XX — Our Present Healer - - no 
XXI — Everyday Demoniacs - - 114 
XXII— That Neighbor of Mine - 118 
XXIII — Prevailing Prayer - - 122 
XXIV— The Measure of Liberality 135 
XXV— Making the Most of the 

Sabbath 139 

XXVI— If You are Truly Sorry - 150 
XXVII— The Sin of Thoughtless- 
ness ------ 154 

XXVIII— At the Approach of Dan- 
ger - - - > - - - 158 
XXIX— A Word About Tempta- 
tion 161 

XXX — Helper of the Helpless - 170 
XXXI— The All-Sufficient Friend 174 
XXXII— The Truth About God's 

Care ------ 177 

XXXIII — ^The Cure for Despondency 185 




Jforetuorb 

HAVE called these little 
talks on everyday prob- 
lems guideposts, not 
because I regard them 
as infallible guides, but 
rather the reverse; for 
I once found in the 
course of a long journey in the mountains, 
that guideposts are not more reliable than 
the people who make them, and should not 
be taken without such grains of allowance 
as the traveler's instinct may suggest. I can 
only feel sure that none of those which I 
have set up in this little volume will be 
found turned entirely around and pointing 
in an opposite direction, like some of those 
I found on my mountain journey ; and I am 
hopeful that if the reader will take them 
as I learned to take my mountain guides he 
will come out — as I did — all right in the 
end. 



Wiit 0nt &ure ^udit 




HE world has always 
wanted to know more 
about God. From the 
beginning men have 
looked up at the stars 
at night and wished that 
God would in some way 
reveal himself. We have always felt that if 
we could once look upon him all our ques- 
tions would be answered, all our darkness 
dispelled, all our longings satisfied. And 
we have never ceased to search for God. 
We have sought him in the stars, and in 
the flowers, and in the winds, and in the 
sea, and in the far-off mountains. We have 
scoured the forest and the desert looking 
for traces of his footsteps. We have honey- 



8 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

combed the earth lookin.s: for specimens of 
his handiwork. Yet, long ago, in the very 
midst of our search God came down into 
the world to satisfy our desire. And men 
looked into his face and went on their way 
to listen for him again in the voice of the 
sea. For Jesus in GaUIee was God mak- 
ing himself known to men — the Invisible 
One come out of impenetrable darkness to 
show himself to human eyes. When men 
looked at the stars they thought they saw 
the wisdom of God; when they looked at 
the mountains they thought they saw the 
strength of God; when they looked upon 
the raging sea they thought they saw the 
anger of God; but when they looked upon 
Jesus they saw — God. They saw him — 
how many saw him and how few recog- 
nized him! 

I do not wonder that those who did not 
recognize him should pass on and look for 
him elsewhere, but the mystery of mys- 
teries to me is that anyone of us who have 
recognized him should pass on likewise. If 
you and I have recognized in Jesus the 



THE ONE SURE GUIDE 9 

image of God, why do we not stop and sit 
at his feet ? Why do we not look to him to 
answer our questions? Why do we not 
look to him to dispel our darkness? Why 
<io we not look to him to satisfy our long- 
ings? 



II 



<§etttns Jf ttfift (^utitioni ^ettkb 




OW came J here? Whence 
came these things 
around me? Did I just 
happen ? Did these 
things around me just 
happen ? Then great 
is Chance. Then Hfe is 
but a game, and I am gaming. Then 
there is no law and no lawgiver. I need 
to obey no one; there is no one who calls 
for my allegiance. Or, have I been 
evolved out of nothing — brought into be- 
ing by some blind, unfeeling force ? Then 
great is Nature. I will bow down to Na- 
ture. I will fear Nature. Thunders and 
lightnings and earthquakes and cold and 
heat will terrorize and enslave me. 

But this world did not just happen. "God 



FIRST QUESTIONS ii 

created the heaven and the earth/' And I 
was not evolved out of nothing. ''God cre- 
ated man in his own image/' What then? 
A man is wrecked on an unknown island. 
He cHmbs the nearest hill and carefully sur- 
veys the whole land, and there is no sign of 
life. It is fearfully lonesome but there is a 
little comfort in the reflection that at last he 
has reached a place where he can do as he 
pleases. And he proceeds to do as he 
pleases. He settles where he chooses, ap- 
propriates what he finds and does every- 
thing according to his own sweet will, and 
all goes well. One day a man-of-war an- 
chors off the island and in half an hour he 
has learned that the place, which he has 
supposed belonged to nobody, is the prop- 
erty of the greatest sea power on earth, and 
that a pearl fishery is to be established upon 
it. What shall he do ? If he is looking for 
trouble he can go on as he started following 
his own sweet will and refusing to recognize 
any other will whatsoever. But if he wants 
to continue on the island and to live a life 
of peace he knows that his only chance is 



12 LIITLE GUIDEPOSTS 

to subject his own will to the will of the 
owner of the island. 

Most of us enter upon life in this world 
as we would enter upon life on an island 
upon which we had been wrecked. We look 
around us and, failing to see the owner of 
the land, take for granted that we have 
found a place where we can follow our own 
sweet wills, and we straightway proceed to 
do as we please. Pretty soon we run up 
against something. We never stop to find 
out what it is ; we simply pick ourselves up 
and try again. Then we get another hard 
knock. And we keep on getting hard 
knocks. Some men go to their graves 
without ever knowing what **hit" them — 
as we say on the streets. Others go on 
until the hard knocks bring them to their 
senses and they discover to their amaze- 
ment what a little child ought to have 
known, that all of their hard knocks have 
come from trying to push their way 
through this world without regard to the 
will of Him who made it and owns it. 
What a wonderful experience is that which 



FIRST QUESTIONS 13 

comes to a man when he resolves tj stop 
trying to push his way across the mighty 
current of God's will and, accepting God's 
will as his own, throws himself upon the 
bosom of the great current, and allows 
himself to be carried without resistance in 
the direction God wants him to go! Here 
is the secret of a peaceful life — to realize 
that God owns this world in which we live 
and to act accordingly. If this world had 
been simply the product of chance then it 
w^ould have belonged to nobody and I 
could have pursued my way through it 
according to my own will and pleasure, 
and without regard to any other will but 
my own. But it did not just happen; it 
was created, and all rights and title thereto 
have remained unto this moment in the 
hands of the Creator ; and if I want to pur- 
sue my way through it in peace I must 
have regard for the will of its owner. I 
must obey the laws of the land. 

But the Book from which I have learned 
that God made all things goes on to tell 
me that this God is infinitely wise and in- 



14 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

finitely good ; that he is infinitely holy and 
cannot look upon sin, and yet full of mercy 
for those who turn to him and repent and 
obey him. If this is true, then great is 
God. If he has my life in his hands, if he 
has all things which I need in his hands, 
then I will look to him ; I will seek to know 
his will. It win be my highest ambition 
to obey his laws. I will worship him. I 
will fear only him. I will care nothing for 
chance. I will not be terrorized by nature. 
I will not tremble at anything. I will fear 
only God. And learning him I will learn 
to love him, and my fear shall be the rev- 
erence of a child for his father and not the 
fear of a slave for his master. 

God created me. But this is not the last 
word. He created me *'in his own image.** 
Here is a truth to crack the brain-box. 
T know nothing else so overwhelming ex- 
cept the announcement of God's wonder- 
ful love for man. We cannot hope to un- 
derstand all that it means, but one thing 
w^ can understand, and that is that if God 
made us in his own image we are in some 



FIRST QUESTIONS 15 

sense identified with him, our lives are in 
some way wrapped up in his hfe, our fu- 
ture in his future, and we are expected 
after some sort to Uve like him. If I had 
been made in the image of a brute all my 
interests would have been with brutes, and 
I would have been expected to live like 
a brute. But, being made in the image of 
God all my interests are with God, and I 
am expected to live like God. 

It is in the very nature of things that 
every creature should live after his own 
order. Nature itself tells me that I do 
violence to myself when I refuse to live 
like God. Even brutal men know that 
every brutal thing a man does is contrary 
to his essential nature. It is not manlike. 
In other words, it is not godlike. If 
God had wanted me to be brutal he 
would have made me a brute, but he want- 
ed me to be godlike and therefore he made 
me in his own image. And having made 
me in his own image he has a right to ex- 
pect that I shall seek to live on his plane; 
to use the brain he has given me in think- 



i6 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

ing his thoughts; to use the will he has 
given me in the direction of his will; to 
love the things he loves and hate the 
things he hates; to identify myself with 
the things of his kingdom. 

A great man passes from among us and 
the eyes of all the people are turned to- 
ward the only son who survives him. He 
is just the image of his father, everybody 
is saying. He has his father's manly form, 
his father's fine features, his father's win- 
ning smile, his father's brilliant talents. 
And the people are expecting, because he 
is the very image of his father, that he will 
walk in the footsteps of his father and do 
honor to his father's name. The world 
has a right to expect that of the son of a 
great man who is the image of his father. 
You and I were made in the image of our 
Father in heaven, and though the likeness 
is sadly marred yet all the universe look- 
ing down upon the world recognizes in us 
a likeness of our Father. And has not all 
the universe a right to expect that we, 
the only creatures made after the divine 



FIRST QUESTIONS 17 

image shall, in some measure at least, walk 
in our Father's footsteps and do honor to 
our Father's name? 

But there is still another first question. 
What did God put me here for? Why 
did he not put me in Heaven? For one 
thing, he tells me, I am on earth to ''sub- 
due*' it. God put me here to subdue the 
earth, not to be subdued by it. If this is 
true then I have no right to give way to 
the difficulties that surround me. I am 
not to be conquered by difficulties; I am 
to conquer. I am not to be the victim of 
circumstances; I am to be the victor. I 
have no right to say I can't. I have no 
right to play the weakling and whine be- 
cause it is too cold or too hot, or lay down 
my hoe because the ground is too hard or 
the grass grows too fast. God did not put 
me here to go around the world with my 
fingers in my mouth. He put me here to 
conquer. Shall I conquer or shall I be 
conquered? Shall I blast the rock to get 
down to the treasures of life or shall I 
yield because the rock is in the way and 
blast my life? 



i8 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

Why does God want us to devote our 
lives to the work of subduing the world? 
Is it because he is so much concerned 
about the world? If I employ the best 
gardener in town to look after my garden 
it will be because I am concerned about 
my garden. I want to make the most of 
it. But if I put it in charge of my 
little son it will not be because I am con- 
cerned about my garden, but because I 
am concerned about my son. He may 
not do much for the garden but the garden 
will do a great deal for him. He may not 
raise many things but he will be greatly 
helped in his own raising. His little 
muscles will grow bigger every day. 
His eye will be trained to measure straight 
lines and curves. He will learn lessons 
in faith. He will learn to resist the temp- 
tation to dig up the seed to see if it has 
sprouted and to wait in faith for the sprout 
to shoot above the ground. He will learn 
lessons in patience while waiting for the 
plants to grow. He will learn lessons in 
perseverance trying to keep down the 



FIRST QUESTIONS 19 

grass. He will learn lessons of God's won- 
derful wisdom and providence and love 
as he goes down into the secrets of the 
plants and of the soil in which they grow. 
And if he is faithful that garden will make 
a man of him. And so God puts us here 
not because he is anxious to make the 
most of the earth which he has created, 
but because he wants to make the most of 
us, his children. He wants to see our lit- 
tle muscles grow bigger every day. He 
wants to see us learn lessons of faith, of 
patience, of perseverance, of love. He 
wants to see us grow up to be men. He 
wants to see us become God-like. If you 
and I are faithful in the work he has given 
us to do we may not accomplish very 
much for others but we will become men. 
That is, we will become like God. 



Ill 




Etie 3aule of JLiit 

HE Lord is thy life; 
therefore love him and 
obey him and thou 
shalt Hve, and it shall 
be well with thee/' 

"He is my life!'' ex- 
claimed a beautiful 
woman who had clung to a brute of a 
husband with a devotion which, to her 
friends, was inexplicable. "He is my life; 
I cannot live without him." And when 
he died she literally ceased to live, though 
she continued in a sort of dead exist- 
ence for some weeks after he was gone. 
In an infinitely higher, stronger sense 
the Lord is your life; you cannot live 
without him. If you would have life 



THE RULE OF LIFE 21 

you must have the Lord, and the Lord 
must have you. You must throw yourself 
at his feet. You must set your heart on 
him. You must love him to adoration. 
You must worship him and him alone. 

Man is a worshiping animal. He must 
worship something. If he does not set 
his heart on that which is good he will 
set his heart on that which is bad. The 
greatest tendency of our modern life is to 
idolatry. We are not often tempted to 
atheism, but we are continually tempted 
to worship some other God than Jehovah, 
and to depend upon some other means of 
learning the divine will than the means 
which God himself has provided. One 
man worships pleasure; another bows 
down to his own reason ; another sacrifices 
himself to his ambition; and a multitude 
of us go down on both knees to the al- 
mighty dollar. It is so much easier to 
bow down to these things, which have 
their root in selfishness, than to worship 
the true God, which requires an utter re- 
nunciation of self. And we must bow 



22 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

down to something. All the world is seeth- 
ing and burning with intense desire. It 
is a day when men do nothing by halves. 
If they welcome money as their god they 
jump into the very middle of the mad race 
for wealth. If it is pleasure they have no 
other thought. We need to have it rung 
into our ears every day we live, "Keep 
yourselves from idols." And we need to 
be reminded every day that there is but 
one way. Every heart has its throne; on 
every throne some god must sit. We do 
not allow our heart-thrones to be empty. 
If we would keep out of our hearts all 
idols we must enthrone the one true God. 
There is room for him, but when he is on 
the throne there is room for no more. It 
is impossible to worship God and Mam- 
mon. It is useless for us to say to-day 
that we will not allow ourselves to be car- 
ried away by the love of this or that or 
the other. The thing for us to say is that 
we will allow ourselves to be carried away 
with love for our God, and then when we 
love him as we ought there will be no dan- 



THE RULE OF LIFE 23 

ger; our hearts will be too full for idols. 

God is my life — the source and provider 
and preserver of my life. If I would have 
life — not physical life merely, but spiritual 
life also — I must be vitally united to God 
as the branches are united to the vine. 
The more perfectly I am united with God 
the more abundant will my life be. 

How can I maintain this vital connec- 
tion with God? The answer is plain: By 
continuing to obey Him whom we have 
enthroned in our hearts. The most fruit- 
ful source of trouble in this life is disobedi- 
ence. Nearly all the trouble that comes 
to us in childhood comes from disobedi- 
ence. A disobedient child has no peace 
and he will not let anybody around him 
have any. Nearly all the trouble that 
comes to us in manhood or womanhood 
comes from disobedience. You disobeyed 
the laws of health yesterday and to-day you 
have a splitting headache. My neighbor 
disobeyed the laws of business yesterday 
and to-day he is ruined. That woman on 
the next block disobeyed the laws of so- 



24 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

ciety and to-day she is in tears because 
her best friend shuns her. The man who 
hauls your coal disobeyed the laws of the 
land and to-day he is in the police court. 
Your son disobeyed the laws of physics 
and to-day he wears his arm in a sling. 
You broke one of God's commandments 
yesterday, and to-day your conscience will 
give you no rest. Why is it that disobedi- 
ence is so destructive to our peace and 
happiness? Because it is an unequal con- 
flict. When we disobey we enter into a 
struggle with a power that is stronger than 
we are. Law is a mighty current upon the 
bosom of which a man may float in perfect 
peace, but let him refuse to go with the 
current, and attempt to cross it, and he 
will find himself buffeting against a power 
which no human strength has ever over- 
come. 

If we will obey God we shall have peace. 
If we will continue to obey him he will 
continue to rule in our hearts and lives 
and it shall be well with us. We need not 
stop to inquire how obeying and loving 



THE RULE OF LIFE 25 

God will secure that vital connection with 
God through which comes our life. We 
need not stop to argue that it is impossible 
to love and obey him unless we already 
have this vital connection with him. It is 
not a theory which we face, but a duty. 
Our part is not to discuss the theology of 
it, but to love God and keep his command- 
ments. This is something that is within 
reach of us all. It is not above our reach 
or our comprehension. It is not some- 
thing too mysterious to grasp. Every 
man who really desires in his heart to love 
God and keep his commandments can 
have that desire fulfilled whatever may be 
the height of his knowledge or the depth 
of his ignorance; for he whose heart 
reaches out after God may depend upon 
the strength of God himself. Let us not 
then stumble over the difficulties of our 
religion. The simple question for us to 
ask is. Do I love and obey God? If I 
have set my heart on God, and if I am 
honestly and continually striving to do his 
will, whatever may be my limitations and 



26 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

weaknesses, I have life; and if I continue 
thus to strive, I shall have life more 
abundantly. 



IV 




Wi^t Secret of tB^rue ^ntttisi 

E want to succeed in life. 
God wants us to suc- 
ceed in life. He may 
not want me to succeed 
in all my undertakings 
but he wants my life 
to be a success. It 
is folly to imagine that any man can 
best glorify God by being a failure. He 
may not want us to have this or that par- 
ticular thing which men are accustomed to 
identify with success — money, or social 
position, or freedom from misfortune — 
nevertheless he w^ants us to succeed in 
life ; he does not want us to fail. He never 
calls a man or woman or child to be a fail- 
ure. 



28 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

When God called Joshua to the leader- 
ship of Israel he wanted him to succeed 
and pointed out to him the key to success. 
God wants us to succeed, and therefore 
he has given us this story of Joshua in 
which we may see the divine finger point- 
ing to the key. "Where is it?*' you ask; 
for the finger does not seem to point to 
anything which we have not seen before. 
Ah! there's the rub. It is not that the 
key is something new or strange, that we 
fail to recognize it; it is because it is so 
old and so simple. This secret of sucess, 
God tells us in this story, consists simply 
in accepting the work which he gives us 
to do, in going forward with courage to do 
that work, in continually studying his will 
as we go along, and in conforming to that 
will as fast as we learn it. 

"This is all very well,*' you say, "but 
how may I know what God wants me to 
do? He told Joshua what he would have 
him do, but he does not tell me.'' Are 
you sure ? If you will read the story again 
you will find that God simply pointed out 



" SECRET OF TRUE SUCCESS 29 

to Joshua the duty immediately before 
him. That was all. And that much God 
does for you and me. He called Joshua 
to a life of consecration to his service, 
and told him the first thing he wanted him 
to do. He calls us to a life of consecra- 
tion to his service and tells us the first 
thing he wants us to do. And when we 
have done that he will tell us the next 
thing. If you and I are in the dark this 
moment as to the way God would have 
us go, we may be sure that it is because 
we have turned away from the duty im- 
mediately at hand. If we will always at- 
tend to the duty directly before us the next 
duty will be made plain to us. Suppose 
Joshua had ignored God's command to 
cross the Jordan and had sat down to un- 
ravel the problem of conquering Jericho; 
would God have given him any light on 
that point? The trouble with us is that 
instead of giving our strength to the duty 
immediately at hand, whether great or 
small, we consume our vitality in worry- 
ing over the darkness that shuts out the 



30 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

duties ahead. God called Joshua to go 
over the Jordan. God calls a child to obey 
his mother. God calls you and me to be 
kind and helpful to a neighbor. It is utter 
folly for a child who neglects to obey his 
mother to complain that he does not know 
what God would have him do. It is utter 
folly for you and me who have left the 
kind word unspoken and the helpful deed 
undone to complain that God does not tell 
us what he wants us to do. The light that 
comes from heaven upon our pathway falls 
immediately in front of us. If we stand 
still the light will be immediately at our 
feet and all will be darkness beyond ; if we 
go forward the light will go forward to 
light up the darkness for us. 

This story tells us how the light comes. 
It is by continually studying to know the 
will of God, and doing that will as fast as 
we learn it. When a young Christian 
complains that he can find nothing to do 
for Christ, we may be sure that either he 
does not read his Bible, or he does not 
read it with the determination to do what 



SECRET OF TRUE SUCCESS 31 

he finds commanded therein. The Bible 
is always suggesting something to do for 
Christ. 



y 




NE of the hardest things 
you and I ever have 
to do is to wait for 
orders. There is noth- 
ing else, perhaps, that 
we do so poorly, or 
with so poor a grace, 
whether our waiting is upon God or man, 
and I do not wonder that the Bible lays 
so much stress upon it and gives us so 
many examples to show us how it should 
be done. 

One of the best of these examples is the 
boy Samuel. Little Samuel "ministered un- 
to the Lord" in the sanctuary. That is a 
high sounding word to use about the work 
of a little boy who did nothing but open 



WAITING FOR ORDERS 33 

doors and sweep floors and carry messages 
and things for old Eli. But Samuel had 
been taught from the beginning that he 
was the Lord's, and everything he did he 
did for the Lord, and therefore he was just 
as truly a minister of the Lord as the 
grand high priest who stood before the 
altar. It was while he ministered unto the 
Lord that the Lord called him, and not 
while he was running away from duty or 
fretting because he was not given some- 
thing better to do. I pause to remark that 
if any of us are looking for promotion 
from God or man we may rest assured 
that it will not come until we have learned 
to fill the positions we hold faithfully, ef- 
ficiently and cheerfully. Neither God nor 
man ever calls one to a higher position 
who is running away from or crying over 
the work he already has. 

But some one will say that Samuel was 
not at work when God called him. That 
is true; he was asleep; but he was asleep 
at his post and therefore in the eyes of 
God he was just as much a minister as if 



34 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

he were awake. Let us not imagine that 
we cease to be in God's service the mo- 
ment we cease to be active. The engineer 
on his locomotive is just as much in the 
service of the road while sitting perfectly 
still in his chair as he is when he is pulling 
out the throttle. There are times when the 
highest duty is to sit still and wait. But 
we must wait at the post of duty. The boy 
who is waiting to be a man so that he can 
do some great thing for God must not 
think that in the meantime he may run off 
^'on a lark'' because God has nothing for 
him to do. The girl who intends to be a 
useful Christian when she becomes a wo- 
man must not think that she can throw 
away the precious years of her girlhood in 
a whirl of dissipation because God has 
nothing for her to do. 

But our interest in Samuel begins after 
he is wide awake. He had been told that 
the voice which he had heard was the 
voice of Jehovah himself; yet he went 
straight to his little bed and lay down 
again with no more fear in his heart than 



WAITING FOR ORDERS 35 

if he had expected to hear the voice of his 
mother. And he waited; how many of us 
would have run away ! We complain that 
God does not speak to us and tell us just 
what he would have us do, and yet how 
few of us are quite ready for him to speak 
to us just now! We would rather he 
would wait awhile, for we don't know just 
what he is going to say, and we fear that 
he may interfere with our plans. There 
is a piece of business we would like to get 
through with first, or a particular pleasure 
to which we have been looking forward 
which we want to enjoy; then we will be 
ready to listen ; then we will be ready to do 
his bidding. 

Samuel was not engaged in any ques- 
tionable practices, nor was he looking for- 
ward to any unlawful pleasures. He had 
no secrets; he had no plans of his own 
which he would not have God interfere 
with; and therefore he went straight back 
to his place where God had called him, 
and lay down and listened. He lay there 
ready to hear God speak, though he didn't 



36 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

know what God was going to say — ready 
to take God's orders, though he had no 
idea how hard a thing God would require 
of him. And when the call came it found 
him in the ideal attitude of a man before 
his Maker: ''Speak, Lord, for thy servant 
heareth." You will notice that there is 
no tremor in his voice. Most of us would 
have been frightened out of our wits. Are 
we not now when God calls us to some 
hard duty — to confess his name before 
men; to speak a word of warning in his 
name? 

What was the secret of it all? What 
made it so easy for little Samuel to wait 
and listen and obey? The answer is in 
one word — consecration. Samuel had been 
dedicated to God from the beginning, and 
he knew it. He had grown up to regard 
himself as the Lord's own child. He never 
thought of himself as his own. He was 
God's and in God's service. He did not 
think of himself one moment as his own 
master and another moment as God's ser- 
vant. He was not halting between two 



WAITING FOR ORDERS 37 

opinions. The die was cast with him. He 
belonged to God, and therefore there was 
no struggle. As God's servant he had 
only to wait and listen and obey. If you 
and I could bring ourselves to feel that we 
are not our own — that we are bought with 
a price ; if the die was really cast with us ; 
if we regarded ourselves every moment as 
belonging entirely to God and separated 
from sin; if the struggle was all over and 
the point was finally settled — would it be 
a hard matter to wait upon God? Would 
it be hard to listen for orders? Would it 
be hard to obey when the orders came? 

Another inspiring example is David. 
David had a right to exhort men to ''wait 
on the Lord" for he never failed to prac- 
tice his own preaching. He knew how to 
wait on the Lord. After his anointing at 
Bethlehem, instead of impatiently de- 
manding his crown, he went quietly back 
to the field to care for his sheep. He 
would bide God's time. It was not an 
easy thing, we may be sure, to be patient 
in view of the way things were turning 



38 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

out. To all human appearances it would 
have been better if he had never been 
anointed. Before that day he knew no 
trials save those which find their way into 
a peaceful shepherd's life; since then he 
had been exposed to the fury of a half- 
insane king, had been hunted like a wild 
beast, and had been compelled to seek 
refuge among the despised Philistines. 
But it is a long road that knows no turn- 
ing, and now at last, when the long night 
was at its darkest, Saul, who for years had 
been pulling stones down upon his own 
head, was finally overwhelmed, and the 
first gray streak of dawn revealed the 
throne just ahead of the Lord's anointed. 
One would suppose that the death of 
Saul would have been accepted by David 
as heaven's invitation to proclaim himself 
king over all Israel, and that without a 
moment's delay he would have set up his 
own throne. But David had found out 
in the course of his hard experience that 
there was Another who was as much in- 
terested in his life as he was himself, and 



WAITING FOR ORDERS 39 

he had learned how to go to him for or- 
ders; and now though the way was ap- 
parently open, he would not move a step 
until he had inquired of the Lord. 

The answer came promptly, *'Go up/' 
But it was not enough for one who felt 
as keenly as David did the need of divine 
direction in a great crisis. '^Whither shall 
I go?" he asked. Choosing the seat of 
his government was not a small matter, 
and he wanted God to decide for him; he 
would not lean to his '*own understand- 
mg. 

And so he knew the whole meaning of 
waiting on the Lord. He could wait on 
the Lord for the working out of his plans, 
ana he could wait on the Lord in prayer. 
But let us be sure that we understand this 
matter as David did. It did not occur to 
him that the way to wait for God to work 
out his plans was to sit down and hold his 
hands. It did not occur to him to leave 
his sheep and go fishing while waiting for 
the crown. And after he had gone up to 
Saul's court it did not occur to him that 



40 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

his only business was to count the hours 
until he should be put in SauFs place. 
There he waited and worked, and he was 
so busy at his work that the people, watch- 
ing him as he went in and out before them, 
were charmed with him. Nobody is ever 
charmed with a loafer. 

Now and then a man in the midst of 
deep business trouble says to me, ''Well I 
feel that somehow God is going to pull 
me through and I am going to sit down 
and let him do it." God will never pull us 
through anything if we do not do some 
pulling for ourselves, unless indeed he has 
given us no strength to pull with. We 
may be utterly unable to untangle the 
meshes but God is not going to untangle 
them for us if we do not work at them with 
our own fingers. We may have just 
enough strength in our right arm to 
stretch it forth and no strength to do the 
work, but if we do not go as far as our 
strength permits we need not expect God 
to stretch out his arm along side of ours. 



VI 




Comtns to 13 $omt 

HE most pitiful failures 
in life I ever met were 
people who never 
amounted to anything 
simply because they 
could not come to a 
point. They were always 
halting between two opinions ; always 
swinging back and; forth between duty 
and inclination; always seeing everything 
except the duty at hand; always sure of 
everything except their own minds. 

We come upon these failures distress- 
ingly often. History is largely an account 
of the heroic efforts of a few men to bring 
their fellowmen to a decision. Moses 
spent forty years trying to screw the reso- 



42 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

lution of his people up to the sticking 
point, and when Joshua took his place the 
work had to be done over again. You will 
recall Joshua's experience. His people 
wanted to worship God, but they also 
wanted to worship idols. They had been 
slow to learn that God is a jealous God 
and that he demands of his people the 
supreme, undivided affection that a hus- 
band demands of his wife. This double- 
mindedness had been the cause of their 
troubles in the past and it was evident to 
Joshua that if they did not overcome it 
it would result in their eternal ruin. He 
determined that they should overcome it. 
He called them together and told them 
that they simply had to come to a deci- 
sion. They must choose between the God 
of Israel and the idols of their fathers. 
And they must decide emphatically, pub- 
licly, out loud. They must bring their 
fists down with a whack and declare once 
for all what they were going to do. They 
must get off the fence. They must come 
to the point or they would never come to 



COMING TO A POINT 43 

anything. Samuel, you will remember, 
made a similar effort. So did Elijah. So 
have all the great men whom God has 
sent to lead his people out of the wilder- 
ness. 

Every master of men knows what it 
means to get a man to commit himself. 
He knows, as well as you and I do, that 
resolutions are not always followed by 
action, and that a resolution, like molasses 
candy, grows brittle as it grows cold; but 
he also knows that there is no right action 
until there is resolution, and that there is 
time for action before the resolution does 
grow cold. He knows also that a man 
does not serve God until he commits him- 
self to serve God, while a man may serve 
Satan only by failure to commit himself to 
God. No one needs to decide to do wrong ; 
he has only to fail to decide to do right. 
Doing wrong is a mere matter of rolling 
down hill. One does not need to decide 
to roll down hill; he has only to let him- 
self loose. But one must decide for the 
right if one is going right, for going right 



44 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

is climbing up hill, and we know that it 
takes decision to climb anywhere. 

In everyday life there are few things so 
powerful, so far-reaching as decision. And 
decision comes from making decisions. If 
you never decide anything you will never 
have any decision, and indecision means 
inevitable, pitiful failure. 

It is true that there are many things 
which we should not be quick to decide, 
and some things concerning which we 
should refuse to take sides; as in matters 
on which we have insufficient light and 
which do not demand an immediate deci- 
sion. But there are other matters which 
we cannot afford to leave open for a single 
day. A man cannot put off eating his 
breakfast until he has studied chemistry 
and then analyzed his bread to find out 
whether his breakfast is worth while or 
not. The fundamental questions in every- 
day life must be settled, and they must be 
settled once for all. It is so with the funda- 
mental questions of the spiritual life. In- 
decision not only cheats us out of every- 



COMING TO A POINT 45 

thing around us that is worth while but it 
cheats us out of everything within us that 
is worth while. The man who is always 
undecided is an annoying failure. Every- 
body knows Johnny Dillydally who could 
not decide which side he wanted to be on 
and as a consequence generally got himself 
left out of the baseball game ; who could not 
decide whether he would serve God or not 
and as a consequence is serving the devil, 
instead. To-day he is a lonely old bach- 
elor because he could never decide which 
girl he loved best, and he is noted mainly 
for missing the train because he can never 
decide until it is too late whether he wants 
to go or not. 

Here is a man who has a general notion 
that he wants to do right, but who has 
not yet determined to do right at all times 
and under all circumstances. That man's 
right doing does not amount to a row of 
pins. What he needs is to settle the thing 
absolutely once for all, and the experience 
of ages has proven that the surest way to 
settle it is to come out boldly before the 



46 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

world and to take one's stand on the right 
side; to say out loud by word and by ac- 
tions that sink or swim, live or die, sur- 
vive or perish, as for me and my house, 
whatever others may do, we will serve the 
Lord. The very act of coming out on the 
Lord's side clears up the mind, strengthens 
the backbone, and makes one's determina- 
tion ten times as strong as if one had only 
resolved in secret. 

When Jesus had gotten his disciples to 
say from their hearts that he was the 
Christ he knew that the foundation was 
well laid, and that he could safely begin to 
build upon it. We can never be sure of 
the foundation of the man who has never 
come to the point about Christ and taken 
his stand for Christ ; nor can the man him- 
self feel sure of it. We never know what 
we know until we make an effort to ex- 
press what is in our hearts. 



VII 




MONG the men of the 
Bible who interest us 
most stands well to 
the front the nobleman 
of Capernaum. And 
yet about all that we 
know about him is that 
he took Jesus at his word. He did not 
ask for a sign or pledge to assure him that 
Jesus would heal his son. He did not at- 
tempt to dictate to him as to when or how 
he should heal him. He did not lay his 
burden upon him and then take it up again. 
He simply took him at his word. He left 
the matter entirely in the Master's hands 
and went away with a light heart, perfectly 
confident that in his own way and in his 



48 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

own good time he would keep his promise. 

And the promise was kept. Of course! 
You cannot conceive that it could have 
turned out any other way under the cir- 
cumstances. 

When I recall how differently you and 
I have often acted under like circum- 
stances I wonder that God should ever an- 
swer our prayers. Do you remember the 
last time you went to Jesus in an hour of 
great extremity and laid your case before 
him? You were driven to the wall, you 
said, and unless he should come to your 
help you were utterly undone. Your bur- 
den was greater than you could bear, and 
you told him you were going to lay it on 
his shoulders and let him bear it for you. 
And you laid the burden upon him, and 
poured out your soul to him, and prom- 
ised to leave everything in his hands. But 
when you rose from your knees you de- 
liberately took up your burden again and 
carried it away on your own heart. You 
could not trust him with it, and you car- 
ried it away and struggled with it until 



TAKING GOD AT HIS WORD 49 

your head and heart were aching worse 
than before, and you had to go back and 
pray again. And you said in your heart: 
"I believe God is going to help me but 
Oh! if he would only do something to 
show that he is really listening to me and 
is interested in my case ! Why does he not 
give me a sign as he used to give his chil- 
dren in ancient times?" And in the same 
breath in which you declared your faith in 
God you asked for a sign which showed 
that you did not believe in him. And then 
you grew desperate, and before you knew 
it you were dictating to God as to how 
your prayer shall be answered. You had 
a note due on the morrow and you felt 
that if God really cared anything for you 
he would send the money, and he would 
send it to-day and not keep you in sus- 
pense about it. You wanted God to an- 
swer your prayer according to your own 
little wildly ticking watch and not in his 
own good time. And you even suggested 
to him what you regarded as the only way 
your prayer could be answered. You said : 



50 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

*Xord, let me have enough money in to- 
day's mail to meet that note." It did not 
occur to your own poor little mind that 
God was depending upon your mail to 
meet your note, or that God had to meet 
your note at all in order to show his love 
for you. 

How did it all turn out? You hardly 
know. Did God answer your prayer? 
You don't know whether he did or not. 
The money did not come in the mail that 
day, that is certain, and it did not come 
the next. The fact is the note was not 
due as early as you thought. You thought 
that you were up against the wall and you 
were three days from the wall. But when it 
finally came due the money did not arrive. 
The fact is you had been extravagant and 
improvident in the management of your 
affairs. You thought you could make 
notes and trust to God, or to luck, or to 
something to pay them. But God saw that 
there was something that you needed more 
than money to pay that note. You needed 
a lesson. And you got what you needed. 



TAKING GOD AT HIS WORD 51 

You went down into the depths. But you 
learned the lesson, and when God saw 
that you had learned it he lifted you up 
again; and to-day the way is smooth be- 
fore you, and there is no wall in sight, and 
the sun shines brighter than ever before. 
And still you don't know whether God 
answered your prayer or not. Do you 
know why you are uncertain about it? It 
is because deep down in your heart you 
feel that such a prayer as that was not fit 
to be answered. You know that if your 
best friend had come to you for help and 
acted in the way you did he would not 
have gotten what he came for. You have 
no use for a friend who cannot take you 
at your word. 

God wants us to trust him without 
signs just as a father wants his child to 
trust him without signs. Suppose my son 
should say to me, "Papa, you promised 
me a gun for Christmas, but I want you 
to do something that will make me know 
that you are going to give it to me." How 
would I feel toward my boy? But suppose 



52 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

I should accede to his request. Suppose I 
should give him my watch and say to him, 
''Now take that and keep it until Christmas 
and see if you do not get your gun." 
Would that strengthen my boy's faith in 
me? Would he not say to himself, "I know 
now that Fll get the gun because papa will 
want his watch back again"? Does a fa- 
ther want to cultivate that sort of faith in 
his son? 

I wish we could learn that this cry for 
signs is unworthy of us. It is so childish. 
Stand a baby in the middle of the floor, 
and insist upon its walking, and it will try 
to crawl. It longs to feel the floor with 
its hands as well as its feet. It is a sign 
of weakness always when one wants to lean 
on something. It takes strength to stand 
up and venture out upon the invisible. We 
are like little babes standing in the middle 
of the floor. The baby that has ventured 
and finds that he can walk is happy; he 
does not want to feel the floor with his 
hands. The Christian who has learned to 
walk, who has outgrown the faith by which 



TAKING GOD AT HIS WORD 53 

we crawl, does not long for signs and won- 
ders; he does not want to feel the floor 
with his hands: he can walk! 



VIII 




jSl ^oob $res;crtptton Jfor tfie STournep 

HE best prescription I 
ever tried was written 
not by a physician but 
by a philosopher. 
"Whatsoever things are 
true" — ^this is the way it 
reads — "whatsoever 
things are honest, whatsoever things are 
just, whatsoever things are pure, whatso- 
ever things are lovely, whatsoever things 
are of good report; if there be any virtue, 
and if there be any praise, think on these 
things/* Paul's idea was that if men would 
keep their minds steadfastly fixed upon the 
things that are true and honorable and 
right and pure and lovable, they would be 
filled with the truth, and would become 



A GOOD PRESCRIPTION 55 

more honorable and just and pure and lov- 
able. And experience has proven that Paul 
was right. 

If you would be healthy think health- 
ful thoughts. 

When we remember how many bad 
thoughts creep into our minds even in 
our best moments we are inclined to feel 
that we ought not to be held responsible 
for our thinking. But we are not taught 
that we are responsible for the evil thoughts 
which Satan sometimes injects suddenly 
into the mind, though we are responsible 
for allowing them to remain in our minds. 
What Paul would have us remember is that 
we are responsible for the thoughts which 
control our lives. "As a man thinketh in 
his heart so is he.'' It is useless for us to 
place a finger upon our lips if we are not 
going to place a bridle upon our thoughts. 
It is useless for us to undertake to act 
right if we are not going to do our best 
to think right. 

Nothing affects the whole of life so 
powerfully as one's every-day thinking. I 



$6 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

heard a great physician say that the best 
prescription a doctor ever gave a man was 
this very verse which I have just quoted. 
"If a man will keep his mind upon the 
things that are pure and good and right 
and lovable and of good report/* he said, 
*'in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he 
will be a well man physically/' and he 
added, "a well man mentally, morally and 
spiritually also." 

Many a man tries to live on a high 
plane in his outward life who is content to 
dwell in the very slums in the hidden life 
of his mind. If you and I intend to be 
Christians in deed, we must be Chris- 
tians in thought. If we would do like 
Christ we must think like Christ. It is 
useless to try to be pure in our lives if we 
are going to sit down alone and deliberate- 
ly give up our minds to impure thoughts. 
It is useless to try to be lovely and lovable 
if we are going to continue to think un- 
lovely things. It is useless to try to love 
God with all the heart if we are not going 
to try to love him with all the mind. 



A GOOD PRESCRIPTION 57 

What then? Let us take hold of our 
minds and bring them to God's altar. Here, 
Lord, is the brain thou hast given me. I 
would use it for thee. From this mo- 
ment, by thy help, I will think thy 
thoughts ! 



IX 




LL the world loves an 
honest man. All the 
world despises a liar. 
Everybody in town lays 
his heart at the feet of 
the young man who 
starts out in life propos- 
ing to be himself and nobody else ; depend- 
ing upon God and himself and nobody else ; 
refusing to take advantage of any accident 
of name or position; — a, young man who 
prizes his character above all things; a 
hearty hater of sham and pretense, who 
would rather die than climb to the highest 
pinnacle of fame under false colors. On 
the other hand there never lived a man 
who did not despise a hypocrite, a de- 



A BAD START 59 

ceiver. And yet there are multitudes of 
young men and young women, boys and 
girls, who start out in life deliberately un- 
dertaking to make their way through the 
world pretending to be something that 
they are not. A little girl has an inordinate 
desire to be considered more genteel than 
all her set, and straightway begins to live 
a life of pretense and sham. She tells a 
hundred little lies about how many fine 
jewels her mother owns, and how grand 
her kinfolks are, and how much money 
her father makes. She grows up to woman- 
hood with the same inordinate desire and 
keeps up the habit. She comes from a 
very ordinary family but she must make 
the world believe that she is high-born. 
Her grand-parents came over in the steer- 
age from Ireland, and she must pay a col- 
lege of heraldry to trace her descent back 
to William the Conqueror. Her paternal 
ancestors seldom wore a coat and the same 
college of heraldry is employed to invent 
for her a coat of arms. A little boy wants 



6o LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

to go fishing on the sly and affects illness 
and stays from school. He wants to buy 
a circus ticket and asks papa for fifty cents 
to put in the missionary box, quieting his 
guilty conscience in the meantime with the 
thought that missionaries and circuses both 
have to do with savages. When he is 
grown the same inordinate desire for gain 
finds a thousand opportunities to pretend 
to be what he is not. He spends six months 
in college and fails to stand a single ex- 
amination, but when he wants to be a 
school teacher he parades as a university 
graduate. By and by his brother goes to a 
foreign land and is lost sight of to the 
world, and when his father dies he pre- 
tends to be the only surviving son and 
inherits all the property. He runs for Con- 
gress pretending to be for free trade when 
at heart he is for protection, or vice-versa. 
And all the while he is trying to quiet 
his guilty conscience with the reflection 
that he does not mean any harm and that 
therefore he is not really building his life 
upon a lie. 



A BAD START 6i 

There are at least three ways of telling a 
lie. We call a man who deliberately, un- 
blushingly, recklessly says that which is 
untrue with the intention to deceive a liar. 
But he does not belong in a class by him- 
self. The man who acts a lie is of the same 
stripe, only more skillful or less reckless. 
So is the man who tells that which is true 
yet with the intention of deceiving. He is 
more skillful still — a pastmaster in the 
art. We have all three of these ways in the 
story of Jacob and Esau. When Jacob 
goes to his blind old father and represents 
himself as Esau he tells a falsehood by both 
word and deed. When Rebekah puts the 
skin of a kid on Jacob's hands she helps 
him to act a lie. Later, when she goes to 
Isaac and declares that she is worn out 
with anxiety lest Jacob should marry 
among the daughters of Heth as Esau had 
done and urges him to send him away, 
she deceives him by telling him the truth 
but not the whole truth. The main dif- 
ference between an unblushing liar and 
one who deceives by diplomacy is a differ- 



62 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

ence of skill, not of heart. Your modern 
Jacob lies down on a couch one morning 
and proceeds to look very wretched. "What 
is the matter, Jacob ?" asks mother. "Noth- 
ing," replies the boy in the exact tone 
which he always employs when he is ill. 
"Are you sick?'' "No-o'm,'' drawls the 
boy, and mother passes on. Little Jacob 
is a diplomatist. Presently the mother 
comes back and places her hand on his 
brow. Yes, he is feverish. He must have 
a little fever. Jacob must not go to school 
to-day. The little rascal can hardly stay 
on his couch for joy. By telling the truth 
with his lips and acting a lie he has de- 
ceived his mother more effectually than if 
he had told a downright falsehood. Little 
Jacob has lied — artistically lied. 

What is it that prompts us on the very 
threshold of life to build our lives on a 
lie? The answer is in one word: greed. 
Most of us start out in life like a boy chas- 
ing a butterfly — with both hands out- 
stretched. We want everything in sight 
and we want it quick. The desire for gain 



A BAD START 63 

is God-given and it is not to be destroyed. 
Without it we would never aim at any- 
thing and never achieve anything. But it 
must be curbed or it will lead us to ruin. 
An inordinate desire for anything will lead 
a man to try to get what he desires either 
by violence or by the safer methods of 
deceit. Violence is risky and sometimes 
costly. Any poor coward can be a deceiv- 
er. If we would escape a life of either vio- 
lence or deceit we must first escape greed. 
We must bridle our desires. And we must 
put the bridle on at the beginning. 



netting ^tsinsi Help Wist 




not to get the best of it. 



ESUS came into the 
world to help the world, 
not to be helped by 
the world ; to put some- 
thing into it, not to get 
what he could out of 
it ; to do his best for it, 
It was not the 
way of the average man and the average 
man did not understand it. The world 
never understands the man who looks out 
for the other fellow. The only solution 
to the mystery is that there must be a 
selfish motive behind it. We expect every 
man to look out for number one, and if 
we find him looking out for number two 
we are tempted to suspect that it is only 



LETTING JESUS HELP US 65 

a blind. So when a man undertakes to help 
his fellowmen he has a good deal of hard 
work to do to convince them that he is 
in earnest. 

Jesus had to spend a great deal of time 
in convincing men that he had no interest 
of his own to serve, and that his whole 
desire was to supply their deepest wants. 
He did not spend a moment looking out 
for himself. He did not stand up for the 
rights which the world gives to every man 
who comes into it. He did not even insist 
upon his right to a place to lay his head. 
He did not claim that the world owed him 
a living. He did not grasp at anything as 
his own. And whenever he did anything 
for men it was done so freely that no man 
ever thought of offering to pay him for his 
service. The nobleman of Capernaum 
would not have dared to send him the 
camel-load of precious things which surely 
would have gone to any other man that 
had healed his son. 

And he was always doing things for 
men. He did a great many things for them 



66 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

not so much to help them as to make them 
feel that he was ready to help them and 
that he could supply their deepest wants. 
This, it seems to me, is the meaning of 
the feeding of the five thousand. The peo- 
ple were not starving. They could have 
gone home for their supper or they could 
have gone supperless to bed without seri- 
ous harm, but he provided the supper with 
the hope that some of them might be led 
to look to him for the things they needed 
most. I do not mean that he had no de- 
sire to provide a supper for the supperless ; 
but that was not the main thing ; the main 
thing was to lead the people to feel that 
he could satisfy all of their wants. He has 
compassion for the hungry multitude go- 
ing supperless to bed. He has a deeper 
compassion for men who have a deeper 
hunger — the hunger of the soul. And as 
he has abundant resources to supply the 
physical wants of men, so he has abundant 
resources to supply their spiritual wants. 

It was the one consuming desire of 
Jesus. The people were in great need. 



LETTING JESUS HELP US 67 

Never were people in greater need. 
And he had come richly supplied with 
everything which they needed. If they 
could only be made to realize that he could 
really satisfy their wants ! And so he went 
about among them holding out his hands 
filled with good things, inviting them to 
come, begging them to come, trying to en- 
tice them by giving them glimpses of the 
good things he had brought and often- 
times scattering handfuls of blessings 
among them; and yet though they accept- 
ed the good things which he scattered 
among them — the healing of their sick, the 
cleansing of their lepers, the raising of 
their dead, the bread for their hungry — 
they still stood aloof, shy, mistrusting, won- 
dering whether they should have anything ' 
to do with him. "Can you not under- 
stand"^ — one can almost hear him say as 
he divides the loaves and the fishes — *'can 
you not understand, O my people, that I 
have come to satisfy all your wants, to fill 
the hungry soul with goodness?" 

And is not this the meaning of every 



68 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

good gift which comes from God to us to- 
day? You and I have had many good 
things from him during the past year. He 
has suppHed this want and that and the 
other. Are not these gifts so many assur- 
ances that he is ready to supply all of our 
wants ? If he sends sunshine into our win- 
dows, is it not an assurance that he is 
ready to send sunshine into our souls also ? 
If he sends showers of rain, does it not 
mean that he would also send showers of 
spiritual blessing if we would only open 
our hearts to him? If he provides bread, 
does not every loaf say to us that God 
wants to provide the bread of life for our 
souls also? 

And shall you and I go on day after 
day reaching out our hands to take these 
lesser blessings and refuse to open our 
hearts to the greater ? Shall we not let him 
satisfy all of our wants? 



XI 



Wbt preab of Htfe 




LITTLE child wanders 
away from home and is 
lost. By-and-by he 
grows faint with hunger 
and lies down, and when 
at last he is found he is 
too weak to rise. He is 
starving to death. But his father gives him 
a bit of bread, and lo ! a miracle. The light 
comes back to his eyes, the blood to his 
cheek, the strength to his limbs, and soon 
he is on his feet again supported by the 
bit of bread, which is the staff of life. 

Jesus is the bread which the Father 
offers to his starving children. What bread 
is to our physical nature Christ is to our 
spiritual nature. If the hungry child turns 



70 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

away from the proffered bread his hunger 
will never be satisfied and he will die. If 
we turn away from the Savior whom the 
Father offers us our hunger will never be 
satisfied and we will die. If the child re- 
ceives the bread, if he appropriates it, if 
he makes use of it, the nutriment that it 
contains will find its way into his blood 
and every part of his body will be nour- 
ished and strengthened by it. If we will 
receive Christ, if we will open our hearts 
to him, if we will give ourselves up wholly 
to him, if we will let him have his way 
with us and in us, if we will not resist him in 
any way but will give up our whole being to 
be used by him, if we will let him have his 
way with our thoughts, our affections, our 
tempers, our tongues, our hands, our feet, 
he will impart his life to us, he will be as 
nourishing food to our souls. 

But how may we feed on Christ? Just 
as the Israelites fed on the manna in the 
wilderness. They went out every morning 
and looked for it, and brought it in and 
appropriated it to themselves; they par- 



THE BREAD OF LIFE 71 

took of it ; they received it into themselves 
trusting that it would preserve them and 
meet their bodily needs. So we should go 
every day, at the beginning, and often 
throughout the day, and look for Him for 
whom our souls hunger — look for him in 
prayer, in the quiet ten minutes with our 
Bibles, in the still hour of communion 
with our thoughts; and when we have 
found him, when our thoughts have be- 
come fixed upon him, when we have be- 
come conscious of him, we should appro- 
priate him — that is, we should open our 
hearts wide to receive him ; we should say 
to him : *'Here, Lord, is thy own ; enter in 
and take possession of me; put thy 
strength into this right arm; put thy love 
into this cold heart; put thy wisdom into 
this narrow mind; use thine own." And 
we should open our hearts to him as the 
Israelites opened their mouths to receive 
the manna, believing, knowing, that he 
will give us the strength that we need for 
the day. 

We may not understand how bread sus- 



J2 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

tains life, supplies strength and helps us to 
grow, but we thoroughly appreciate the 
fact that if we cease to eat we will cease 
to grow, our strength will leave us, and 
we will inevitably die. And we do not re- 
fuse to eat on the ground that we do not 
understand the processes of nutriment. We 
know that Nature will not say of one of 
us: *'He does not eat, but then he does 
not understand why he should eat, and 
therefore he must not be allowed to die. 
He shall live whether he eats or not." Yet 
that is precisely the attitude of multitudes 
in the matter of spiritual nourishment. A 
man says he cannot see how accepting 
Christ can do him any good. He is trying 
to serve God and to deal justly with his 
fellow-men, and knowing nothing of this 
mystery of spiritual nourishment he does 
not see why he should not let it alone. If 
he is sinning against God he can plead 
Ignorance as an excuse. But suppose a 
man who refuses to eat should say: "If I 
am sinning against the law of nature, I can 
plead ignorance as an excuse?*' Will that 



THE BREAD OF LIFE 73 

keep him from starving? The question 
with us is not whether we can understand 
how Christ becomes our nourishment; we 
can no more afford to wait to have that 
explained to us than we can wait to have 
the mysteries of nutriment explained be- 
fore eating our breakfast. The question 
is, Shall we open our hearts, our whole be- 
ing, to Christ, and let him fill us with him- 
self? 



XII 




Unotoing tl^c Xorb 

MAN to whom the Son 
of God had been reveal- 
ed by the Holy Spirit 
pointed to Jesus and 
told his companions 
that he was the One 
their hearts had been 
crying for — the Lamb of God who alone 
could take away their sins. They sought 
his presence; Jesus knowing their hearts 
turned to meet them; meeting him face to 
face their hearts were satisfied, and they 
hastened to tell other hungry souls about 
him. 

Here in a nutshell is the history, on the 
human side, of all that has been done to 
set up the kingdom of Christ upon the 



KNOWING THE LORD 75 

earth. It is simply a matter of getting men 
to know the Lord. If we know him we 
will love him ; if we love him we will serve 
him; if we serve him we will bring others 
to know him and therefore to serve him. 
When the knowledge of the Lord shall fill 
the earth the servants of the Lord shall fill 
it. We cannot know the Lord without lov- 
ing him and we cannot love him without 
serving him. 

It is a personal matter. You and I must 
personally know a personal Christ. The 
two disciples seeing Jesus went after him. 
They were not content to learn about him 
at second hand. They might have gone to 
Jerusalem and consulted the rabbis ; they 
might have searched the records of the 
family of David at Bethlehem; they might 
have spent a week in Nazareth making in- 
quiries of his neighbors. This would have 
been the scientific method, and by this 
method they would doubtless have learned 
something about Jesus. But John had 
awakened their hearts, and they were 
hungry not for knowledge about the Mes- 



76 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

siah but to know the Messiah, and they 
followed the inclination of their hearts and 
went straight after him. That it was an 
impulse of the heart rather than the head 
is indicated by the fact that they went 
without planning beforehand what they 
would say or do when they should overtake 
him. Their hearts were longing for the 
Lamb appointed by God to take away sin. 
This is the truth we want to learn — 
that it is the personal knowledge of Christ 
as Lord which makes men servants of 
Christ. If we want to love Christ more and 
serve him better we must get better ac- 
quainted with him. If we want to get others 
to know him we must first know him our- 
selves. There is absolutely no substitute 
for this method. We sit complaining of 
the coldness of our hearts and wishing that 
something would happen to make us love 
God better. Meanwhile we neglect the 
quiet moments and the open Bible and 
every other means by which men are 
brought face to face with God. We ask 
God to help us to love him better and never 



KNOWING THE LORD yj 

make an effort to know him better. It is 
an insult to God, just as it would be an 
insult to a neighbor whose acquaintance 
we do not care to cultivate if we should say 
to him, "I wish you would help me to love 
you." We may pray for a warmer heart 
toward God as much as we please ; we may 
speculate about Jesus as much as we 
please; we may complain of our coldness 
until we are numb; we may wait for a 
miracle till doomsday; but so long as we 
neglect the opportunities we have to know 
Jesus better we will never learn to love him 
better, and we will never serve him better. 
To complain of our coldness toward God 
is to confess that we have neglected our 
opportunities to commune with him. 

When Jesus called his disciples into his 
service he did not tell them to follow along 
behind him, and do as they saw him do — 
they might have done that forever and it 
would not have made them successful fish- 
ers of men. He said to them : "You have 
made a great haul ; but come with me and 
I'll show you how to do something better 



78 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

still. I'll make you fishers of men." And 
they went with him; they associated with 
him, day and night, drinking in his words, 
drinking in his spirit, imbibing his wis- 
dom, becoming saturated with his love; 
and when they had become in some sense 
like unto this great fisher of men, they too 
began to catch men. It was not by the 
mere imitation of Christ, but by association 
with Christ that we become fishers of men. 



XIII 



iHafeing tfje iWostt of ©ur Waltntu 




ESUS expects me to wait 
for his coming, not as 
a host who has set his 
house in order for his 
guest, but as a ser- 
vant who is waiting for 
his master's return. It 
IS not enough that the servant should have 
the house in order; he must be prepared 
to show that he has done his best with the 
responsibiHties which his master placed 
upon him. The servant who is ready for 
his master is the servant who has kept 
busy doing his master's will. 

God put me here. This is his world and 
I am his servant. He put me here for a 
purpose. My place, whatever it may be, 



8o LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

is a post of duty. Every man, woman and 
child is on duty. In this world nobody is 
off duty save the dead and the imbecile. 
While we have life in us, while we have 
a spark of intellect in us, while we have a 
particle of strength left in us, we have 
something to do. Our strength may be 
small and it may be a little thing which 
God expects of us, but he will expect that 
thing. He has a right to expect it because 
he has given us the strength and the op- 
portunity to do it. One may say that the 
Lord in the parable had servants to whom 
he gave no talents. Never mind: we do 
not hear that he required anything of 
them. If we have nothing God will require 
nothing, but I think there is hardly one 
of us prepared to admit that we are quite 
dead, imbecile, nil. 

When we come to ask ourselves the 
question whether we are doing our duty, 
it is not a matter of any importance whether 
our opportunities are many or few, wheth- 
er we have great talents or small, whether 
we are extraordinarily bright or extraordi- 



OUR TALENTS 8i 

narily dull, whether we are as rich as 
Croesus or as poor as poverty; the ques- 
tion is; whether we are making the most 
of the opportunity, the strength, the abili- 
ties we have. I have a capacity for reli- 
gion: am I as deeply religious as I can 
be ? I have a capacity for loving God : do 
I love him with all the strength I have? 
I may not have any talent for speaking, 
but I have the ability to smile. That is 
a small thing, but with it I may scatter 
much sunshine. Am I making the most of 
my ability to smile ? Do I scatter as much 
sunshine as I can, or do I sit down and 
fold my hands because my talent is so 
trifling? The lord in the parable did not 
expect the man to whom he gave one talent 
to make five talents, or two, but he might 
have made one. He was absolutely inex- 
cusable for making no use of the one, for 
at the very least he might have deposited 
it where it could have drawn interest. The 
teaching is plain ; there is absolutely no ex- 
cuse for a man who has a single talent if 
he neglects to use that talent. It is not 



82 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

necessary that he should be talented or that 
he should have a talent for doing one thing. 
It is only necessary that he should have 
something which he can use for good or 
for the glory of God. Am I making the 
most of the small ability I have? I count 
up the things God has put in my hands — 
the time, the everyday opportunities of 
life, the capacity to love him, the ability 
to scatter sunshine, strength of hand to 
serve those around me, swiftness of foot 
to carry help or a message of comfort to 
some one in the distance — they are small, 
they are very small ; but am I making the 
most of these things? Am I using them 
so faithfully that I will be able to stand 
before the Master when he calls for a reck- 
oning and make my report without shame? 
That is the question and that is the only 
question. 



XIV 




Cabins i|a^arboufi( 3Siisikfi 

IFE is full of perils. 
There is not a spot on 
earth that is free from 
possible danger. Many 
a man has lost his life 
lying in bed, by the fall- 
ing of a wall. Wherever 
we go there is but a step between us and 
death. To refuse to run any risk is to refuse 
to live, for there is danger even in breath- 
ing. We cannot eliminate danger from 
life ; the best we can do is to steer clear of 
certain peril and to exert the utmost care 
while walking amid possible dangers. 

The dangers of life may be divided be- 
tween the dangers which must be met and 
the dangers which should be avoided. 



84 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

There are some dangers which must be 
met every moment. Danger lurks in the 
air we breathe, but it is not our duty to 
avoid breathing ; it is only our duty to take 
every precaution we can against breathing 
bad air. There is a possible danger in the 
walls which surround us in our homes, 
but it is not our duty to live in the open 
fields; it is only our duty to see thai the 
walls which surround us are made as se- 
cure as possible. One may run the nsk 
of driving a horse provided one knows how 
to drive, though **a horse is a vain thing 
for safety;" and one may play with a well 
disposed dog though it is the nature of 
dogs to bite. On the other hand, there 
are dangers so great that we cannot 
afford under any circumstances to expose 
ourselves to them. It would be criminal, 
for instance, for a man who is subject to 
attacks of dizziness to attempt to walk a 
rope or climb a steeple. It would be crimi- 
nal for an ordinary man to play with pois- 
onous serpents. There are things so da^i- 
gerous that we cannot even afford to come 



TAKING HAZARDOUS RISKS 85 

near them or to look upon them. Drink, 
for example, is one of these dangers. It 
is not one of the ordinary dangers of life. 
It is not one which we can afford to handle, 
even with care. It is something to run 
from ; and to run from it is the better part 
of valor. The wise man of Proverbs places 
drink on a level with serpents. When a 
man finds himself in the neighborhood of 
an adder, the only sensible thing for him 
to do is to get out of that neighborhood 
as quickly as possible. Drink is as dan- 
gerous as an adder: one may as well at- 
tempt to caress a poisonous serpent as to 
expose himself to this temptation. This 
is the wise man's proposition and he estab- 
lishes it. He has good reason for putting 
wine and serpents in the same class, ior 
they are often found in the same glass. 
Drink is for all the world Hke the ser- 
pents that charm men. You see it glow in 
the cup, you see its eye — the pretty beaded 
bubbles that charm men of appetite; you 
see it sparkling and foaming — "moving it- 
self aright." You are drawn towards it. 



86 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

Presently when it has you in its power, it 
turns to sting you. It is the way of the 
charming serpent. Suppose you should 
stop suddenly in some secluded wood, to 
find yourself in the presence of such a ser- 
pent. What would you do? If you knew 
its charming power do you think you would 
risk yourself in its presence? Would you 
look upon it when it is red ? — ^when it turns 
its eye upon you? — when it moves itself 
aright? Would you not fly in terror lest 
you should be brought under its power, 
and would you feel ashamed of yourself 
for running ? Would you feel that you had 
played the coward, or would you care if 
you had played it? Now, says the wise 
man, this wineglass is like that serpent. 
It will not charm you as quickly, but it 
will bury its fangs in you the moment it 
gets you in its power, just as that serpent 
will. What will you do about it? Will 
you expose yourself to it? Will you fre- 
quent places where it is to be found? 
Should you not, on the very threshold of 
manhood or womanhood, set down drink 



TAKING HAZARDOUS RISKS 87 

and every other form of pleasure that in- 
flames the appetite as among the perils 
which are too great to be handled ? Should 
you not decide that, whether the world 
laughs at you for running or not, whether 
it calls you a coward or a fool, you will 
run from this danger? 

And after all, which is the greater fool 
and the greater coward — the man who 
laughs at another for getting out of the 
way of the poisonous serpent, or the man 
who stands before the serpent and tries 
to play with it, because he is afraid his com- 
panions will laugh if he should run? 



XV 



Csftapins tfje Morlb'ss iWasnetttm 




OU have a friend who is 
noted for his devotion 
to whatever he under- 
takes. The other day 
you went with him to 
a distant city on busi- 
ness, and while there 
you lost sight of him. One afternoon 
you went to look him up, and when 
at last you came upon him he was just 
where you would have expected to find 
him if you had but stopped to think. 
When you told him of your anxiety he 
was both surprised and grieved. This man 
was accustomed to spell duty with a large 
D, and he could not understand why any- 
one should look for him away from his 



THE WORLD'S MAGNETISM 89 

post. ''Did you not know that I was at- 
tending to this business?" he said. "Did 
I not come to the city for this very pur- 
pose? Why should you have been uneasy 
about me?" 

Something of this feeUng the boy Jesus 
must have had when, sitting at the feet 
of the doctors in the temple, he turned to 
look up into his mother's face. He was so 
completely absorbed in his Father's mat- 
ters that the alternative of being elsewhere 
than in his Father's house, or engaged in 
anything but his Father's business had not 
occurred to him. His inclinations were all 
that way and anything else would have 
been unnatural to him. 

This is what you and I want— to be so 
strongly inclined to the right and the good 
that it will be natural for us to seek the 
best things. The trouble with most of us 
is that our inclinations are all the other 
way. We purpose to do right but our 
bent is toward the wrong. Our aspirations 
reach to the stars, but our appetites de- 
scend to the dust. Our aim is to walk in 



90 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

the path of duty but our disposition is to 
wander out of it. If our inclinations would 
only go along with our resolutions and our 
better judgment! 

What was it that drew the boy Jesus as 
by a magnet toward his Father's affairs? 
For a boy left alone in a great city de- 
liberately to choose to spend his time at 
the feet of great religious teachers is so 
unnatural that, to many minds, it is almost 
incredible. Jesus could do it because he 
was divine, says one. Or, he was a pale, 
sickly child who cared nothing for the 
sights, says another. But it was not the 
divinity in Jesus that hungered for the 
knowledge of the truth at the feet of the 
rabbis ; it was the human Jesus. And there 
is no evidence that he was a sickly boy 
with no interest in the beautiful world 
around him. There is nothing of the in- 
valid in any picture which we have of our 
Lord from Bethlehem to Calvary. Jesus 
was drawn to his Father's house because 
his heart was set upon his Father. This 
is the whole story. Where a man's heart 



THE WORLD^S MAGNETISM 91 

has gone, there will he go also. His heart 
being with his Father, the rest of his being 
was drawn toward his Father. If his heart 
had been set upon the world he would 
have been drawn body and mind and soul 
to the things of the world, but his heart 
being set upon his Father he was drawn 
away from the world. 

Here is the solution to one of the most 
serious problems of life. If you and I are 
to escape the magnetism of the world we 
must put our hearts as far from the world 
as possible; we must give our hearts to 
God. No man is strong enough to keep 
himself from the world by sheer force. We 
follow our hearts as a mother follows her 
child. If we will give our hearts to God 
we will be drawn toward God and the 
things of God. Our footsteps will be drawn 
toward his house; our eyes will be drawn 
toward his guiding hand; our hands will 
be drawn toward his work;^ our thoughts 
will be drawn toward his word. 



XVI 




Slije jFear of Peing different 

ERHAPS you have been 
very faithful in perform- 
ing all those acts which 
we are in the habit of 
regarding as pious du- 
ties. You have not miss- 
ed a Sunday at church 
or at Sunday School in a year, you have 
never forgotten to say your prayers morn- 
ing or night, and the dust has never been 
allowed to rest upon your Bible. Some- 
times you feel a little tired. Are you ever 
tempted at such a moment to ask whether 
after all it is worth while to be so pious — 
whether you might not get along just as 
well with less church going, and less pray- 
ing, and less Bible reading — whether you 



FEAR OF BEING DIFFERENT 93 

would not get along just as well if you 
should live more like other people? Are 
you tempted to feel at such a moment that 
this thing of being different from other 
people is largely self-conceit — that it is the 
duty of one who lives in Rome to do as 
Rome does ? Take care and beware. Satan 
has no stronger means of tempting you. 
Do you remember when the Israelites went 
to Samuel and begged for a king? With 
the exception of their seasons of spiritual 
exaltation, when they were glad to ac- 
knowledge Jehovah as their absolute sov- 
ereign, Israel had always wanted a king. 
When their hearts were warm, they had 
gloried in the fact that they were unlike 
other nations; but now that their hearts 
were cold their greatest ambition was to 
be like other nations. They no longer had 
the courage to resist public opinion; they 
did not want to be a peculiar people : back- 
sliders always have a horror of being a 
peculiar people. We know how cold a 
church is by the struggle it makes not to 
be peculiar. 



94 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

There is nothing more subtle, more de- 
ceptive than Satan's argument in favor of 
a Christian living like other people. It is 
his master stroke. He knows full well that 
if he can induce a Christian to live like 
other people he can induce him to live just 
as he wants him to live, for these people 
whom we are tempted to live like are likely 
to be living just as Satan wants them to 
live. Nowhere in the Bible am I told that 
it is my duty to live like other people. No- 
where am I told that it is my duty to do 
like Charles, or William, or Henry, or 
Mary. It is my duty to do right. I have 
nothing to do with Charles, or William, 
or Henry, or Mary except to help them to 
do right. It is not self-conceit that makes 
a Christian want to live different from the 
world. It is not because he wants to live 
different from other people, but because 
he wants to live like the people of God. 



XVII 



W^t Cprant !9ppettte 




ELC a man who is living 
in sin that he is a slave 
and he will laugh in 
your face. He would 
have you understand 
that he is his own mas- 
ter, and that he can do 
as he pleases; that these sins which he 
commits are but trifles, mere playthings 
which he can toss about at will. He has 
a will of his own. He is no slave. But 
one dreary morning he wakes up with a 
sense of the burden of sin. He is tired and 
he wants to get rid of the burden and he 
rises to shake it off. Alas ! he cannot shake 
it off. He who has always regarded him- 
self as his own master finds himself mas- 



96 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

tered. He who has always had a will of 
his own finds that he has mistaken its 
power. He who has thought that his sins 
were playthings now finds them chains, 
heavy, hard and cruel. He is bound hand 
and foot. His mind is in chains as he 
finds when he tries to rid it of sinful 
thoughts. His body is in chains as he 
finds when he tries to shake off his sinful 
habits. His heart is in chains as he finds 
when he tries to empty it of his sinful de- 
sires. He is a slave — a miserable, help- 
less slave. 

The trouble about this tyrant is that he 
begins by taking hold of a man where he 
is weakest. *'The spirit indeed is willing,'* 
said Jesus, "but the flesh is weak.'' And the 
flesh is always weak. "My heart is with 
you," said a great politician to a temper- 
ance audience, "but my appetite is against 
you." A man will ring clear in his inner- 
most soul on almost every question of 
right, but in his body he is only a puny 
babe. If the spiritual man does not rise up 
and take his body absolutely under his con- 



THE TYRANT APPETITE 97 

trol, his body in its weakness will go to the 
bad, and his spirit will go with it. Ap- 
petite takes hold of the body and if it is 
not hindered it soon gets absolute control 
of it. A man swallows wine and soon wine 
swallows him. ''They are swallowed up 
of wine." 

It would not be so bad if it stopped 
here. The victim of appetite would only 
be on a level with the victim of typhoid, 
which destroys the body and leaves the 
spirit untouched. The trouble is when 
appetite gets control of the body it has 
only begun its deadly work. Its thirst is 
insatiable. It drinks the blood of men and 
is not satisfied. It sucks up the brains of 
men and cries for more. It reaches out 
and gets hold of the moral nature and 
saps all its juices. When a man gives his 
body over to the indulgence of appetite he 
gives over the whole man. When it has 
had its way a man is devoid of all moral 
sense. The moral sense goes first. He 
may see clearly with his intellect long after 
he has lost power to see with his moral 



98 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

nature. Self-indulgence reaches out after 
the will. It finds its way along down the 
moral backbone and sucks all the strength 
out of it. A drunkard has no more back- 
bone than a jelly-fish. The will is de- 
stroyed, and when the will is destroyed 
the man is destroyed. 

What will save a man from the tyranny 
of appetite? What is the one sure remedy 
for every form of self-indulgence? There 
are remedies enough, to be sure, such as 
they are. Nearly everybody has a favorite 
prescription which he would like to try — 
on somebody else. But the trouble with 
the average remedy which men advertise, 
whether it is for the cure of consumption 
or the cure of an evil habit, is that it 
doesn't go to the root of the matter. Your 
anti-swearing prescription may stop a man 
from profanity, but it does not reach the 
evil within that led him to swear. You 
simply cure one sore — stop up one outlet — 
and presently the evil in the blood breaks 
out at another point. A man may stop 
drinking and, like the Mohammedan tee- 



THE TYRANT APPETITE 99 

totaler, break out in unspeakable forms of 
impurity. What we want is a remedy that 
will reach the innermost springs of evil. 

And this the gospel has furnished. What 
is the gospel prescription for the cure of 
evil habits? Simply this: '*Walk in the 
Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of 
the flesh.'' That is, open your heart to 
Christ, put yourself in his hands, allow 
yourself to be dominated in all things by 
his Spirit, and you will no longer be influ- 
enced by your sinful appetites. There is 
no mystery about this. It is a perfectly 
scientific prescription based upon the law 
that nature abhors a vacuum. If your heart 
is full of evil desires you do not accom- 
plish anything by trying to get them out. 
It is like dipping air out of a glass. If 
you want to get the air out of the glass 
you don't need to bother about getting 
it out; you simply want to put something 
else in — something that is strong enough 
to push the air out and to keep it out. Fill 
the glass with water and the problem is 
solved. So if you want to rid your heart 



loo LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

of evil desires, you do not need to bother 
about getting them out — you simply want 
to put something else in — something that 
is strong enough to expel the evil desires 
and keep them out. There is one thing 
that is utterly antagonistic to the "flesh/' 
and that is the Spirit. If you will open 
your heart to the Spirit, if you will sur- 
render yourself to Christ and have him 
take possession of your heart, then the 
problem is solved. The moment Christ 
dominates you, sinful desires will cease to 
dominate you. *'For these are contrary 
the one to the other." 




XVIII 

WBiitn i^asion ii jBetfironeb 

OVE is the greatest thing 
in the world because it 
is the nearest point of 
approach to God. Hate 
is the worst thing in 
the world because it 
is the farthest point we 
can get from God. Love is of the very 
nature of God, for God is love. Hate is 
the most ungodlike thing that can enter 
into the heart of man. When a man is con- 
trolled by the spirit of hate he ceases to 
bear any resemblance to God. The divine 
likeness is gone. He is no longer a man, 
for a true man bears the image of his 
Maker. He is a brute. When we come to 
think of it there is practically no difference 



I02 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

between a man who is filled with hate and 
a brute. He is no longer a reasoning or 
reasonable being. He is no longer master 
of himself. He is a victim — a victim of 
a brutal passion. He cannot see things 
as they are. Everything that he does is of 
an irresponsible sort like the irresponsible 
acts of brutes. We think of an intoxicated 
man as one who has defiled the temple of 
the Holy Ghost and brought the image of 
God into the dust. An angry man does 
the very same thing — he falls from the 
level of manhood down to the level of a 
brute. 

Who has not noticed the utter lack of 
perception, of reason, of judgment in the 
man who is set on fire with hate ? Here is 
God reasoning with Cain. It is as plain as 
the sun that no one is to blame but Cain 
himself. Reason must demand that the man 
should put the blame where it belongs and 
confess his sin and beg forgiveness, but 
in his anger Cain does not hear the dic- 
tates of reason. Reason has been de- 
throned. He cannot see that he is a wrong- 



REASON DETHRONED 103 

doer, he sees himself as the wronged one. 
He imagines that God has shown partial- 
ity and that therefore God is to blame. 
And then he imagines that Abel is to blame 
— though just what Abel had to do with it 
he could not tell if his life depended upon 
it. He simply blames Abel because God 
has favored him. How utterly absurd! 
And yet he goes on nursing his wrongs 
under the impression that he is doing a 
perfectly reasonable thing. Everybody else 
is unreasonable, he alone is reasonable. 

But that is not all. Cain is not only un- 
able to see things as they are but he is 
devoid of judgment. Wisdom would have 
said. Now while I am feeling as I do to- 
ward my brother I will avoid him, lest I 
precipitate trouble. But angry Cain has 
no wisdom. Wisdom has been dethroned. 
And instead of avoiding his brother he 
goes to look for him. One cannot easily 
do a more foolish thing than go to seek 
another while in a passion. But even this 
is not all. He is not only devoid of per- 
ception and judgment but he is like all 



104 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

other brutes; he is devoid of self-control. 
Perhaps he persuades himself that he can 
go and talk this matter over in a very rea- 
sonable way with his brother. He is not 
going to say one word that he ought not 
to say, but he is going to talk straight 
from the shoulder. But when he reaches 
his brother and his tongue starts, it goes 
without a bridle and in another moment it 
is running away. Did you ever see any- 
thing quite so foolish as a man whose 
tongue is running away and setting every- 
thing on fire as it goes ? Is it strange that 
a man who has allowed hate to dethrone 
every godlike thing within him and to 
bring him down to the level of a brute 
should do a brutal thing and in a moment 
of brutal passion pounce upon his fellow- 
man and slay him? Is it not the nature of 
love to preserve and protect, and is it not 
the nature of hate to destroy? 

If I want to be a man — if I want to be 
like God — let me beware of this horrid 
monster that finds its way into the heart 
only to drag reason from its throne, and 



REASON DETHRONED 105 

to destroy the image of God that is within 
me and to make a very brute where once 
there was a man. 



XIX 




HE manliest thing a man 
can do who has wrong- 
ed his neighbor is to 
go straight to him and 
acknowledge the wrong 
and beg forgiveness. 
It is not only the man- 
liest thing, but it is the only manly 
thing for such a time Most of us imagine 
that we must lay aside our manhood to 
go to one we have wronged ; but those 
of us who have been through such an 
experience know that we laid aside our 
manhood when we wronged our neigh- 
bor and that we did not get it back until 
we went to him. Try it : if you do not feel 
more manly after you have asked forgive- 



THE MANLIEST THING 107 

ness it will be because you do not know 
the feeling of manhood. In view of this 
fact is it not strange that so many of us 
should go about day after day with a mis- 
erable, soiled sensation — a sensation of be- 
ing less than a man, a sensation that keeps 
us from either happiness or usefulness — 
all because we imagine that it is unmanly 
to go to the man whom we have wronged 
and beg his forgiveness? 

I said it is the manliest thing and the 
only thing. If this is true in our relations 
with our neighbor how much more is it 
true in our relations with God! When a 
man wrongs his neighbor it is bad, but 
when he wrongs his supreme benefactor — 
when he stretches forth an arm that God 
has given him against God himself; when 
he profanes the name of God with the 
voice he has received from God — that is 
something infinitely, inexpressibly worse. 
Moreover, when a man wrongs his neigh- 
bor he throws himself out of gear with his 
neighbor and, in some sense, with man- 
kind; but when he wrongs God he throws 



io8 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

himself out of gear with the whole uni- 
verse. Do you see that great engine in the 
mill yonder running with the band off the 
wheel? What is it doing? Consuming 
fuel by the ton and time by the hour and 
occasionally blowing off useless steam. 
That is all. And that will be all until the 
band is put back upon the wheel. You 
may shovel all the coal into it that it will 
hold, but it will not turn a single spindle 
in all the mill. That engine is not more 
completely cut off from the possibility of 
usefulness than is the man who has thrown 
himself out of gear with the universe by 
sinning against God. Try as you may, so 
long as you are at enmity with God noth- 
ing you can do will be worth while. There 
is but one thing in the world for the sin- 
ner to do and that is to go to God, and the 
sooner he goes the better. 

David felt this in the very depths of his 
heart when he threw himself on his face 
before the Lord and poured out his soul 
in a cry for forgiveness that sounded like a 
man crying for his Hfe. And he was in- 



THE MANLIEST THING 109 

deed crying for his life. He felt that he 
was utterly undone and that he could never 
do anything unless God would forgive him. 
If God would forgive him then he would 
be clean again and worthy of a place in 
the world. If God would forgive him then 
he would be useful again: he would teach 
transgressors God's way and sinners would 
be converted to him. If God would for- 
give him he would be happy again: his 
mouth would show forth God's praise. 

If we coula only bring ourselves to real- 
ize this great truth ! If we could only feel 
that when we have sinned there is nothing 
worth doing until we have gone to God — 
that until we are forgiven we will be out 
of gear with the universe, and can know 
no happiness and can do nothing worth 
doing ! 



XX 



(But Sj^vtitnt dealer 




HIS meek and holy One 
of Galilee whose gentle 
countenance draws the 
little children to him, 
who speaks with in- 
finite tenderness to the 
helpless — this man who 
is love itself, is a terror to all diseases, all 
demons, all evil things. He goes about 
Galilee overflowing with virtue; and be- 
fore the virtue which goes out of him evil 
spirits flee in terror, and all diseases van- 
ish. No evil thing can stand in his pres- 
ence. Devils struggle to keep their hold, 
but are forced into precipitate retreat. 
Death itself, at the sound of his voice, re- 
linquishes its clammy grasp on its victim 



OUR PRESENT HEALER 1 1 1 

and is gone. And all the while one may 
look into his face and see only infinite com- 
passion. There is no harshness in his voice, 
no sword in his hand. He is life and 
health; and death, and therefore disease 
must vanish before him. 

Sometimes when we look on the scene 
our hearts ache with envy. If he were 
only with us to-day as he was with those 
people of Galilee ! If he would only come 
and place his tender hand upon mother's 
aching brow ; if he would but take our lit- 
tle dying daughter by the hand and lift 
her up! If he would but come quietly in 
when the doctor has said there is no hope 
and take charge of the hopeless case! 

If! But he does! Many and many a 
time he has come in answer to our cry 
as truly as he came to those who cried 
after him in Capernaum. Sometimes, in- 
deed, he chooses only to soothe the heart 
while the head keeps throbbing, for he 
knows it is better; and sometimes he 
reaches out his hand to the little dying 
daughter, and instead of raising her up 



112 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

into a life of pain and darkness and struggle 
and mystery, lifts her up to himself where 
there is no pain nor darkness nor struggle 
nor mystery. Besides, he is healing men 
of diseases far more terrible than any mere 
physical ailment. 

This is what we want to lay on our 
hearts — that Jesus is among us as our 
healer as truly as he was among the Ca- 
pernaumites as their healer, and that among 
us he is healing men of worse diseases 
than the fever and leprosy which he re- 
buked in Capernaum. We sit still in our 
homes moaning over our own soul-sickness 
or over the progress of disease in the 
hearts of our sons and daughters while the 
Great Physician passes by unnoticed. Here 
is a loved one possessed of a spirit as vile 
and stubborn almost as the unclean devil 
that possessed the man in the synagogue — 
a beastly temper, perhaps, or an unclean 
appetite; a disposition to lie; a cynical 
spirit; a revengeful spirit; a malicious 
spirit. Do we believe that the Great Phy- 
sician has power to cast out such a demon ? 



OUR PRESENT HEALER 1 13 

Do we believe that the blood of Jesus Christ 
can cleanse the vilest heart? Do we be- 
lieve that Jesus can save a drunkard ? Do 
we believe that he can purify a fallen 
woman? Do we beheve he can change a 
man who is dishonest at the core? Then 
why do we shake our heads over such 
cases? Why do we weep so much over 
our lost ones and pray so little over them ? 
Why is it that we are hopeful only of the 
hopeful cases ? Why is it that we who pro- 
fess to believe that the blood of Jesus Christ 
cleanseth from all sin have so little hope 
of the man whom we have discovered to 
be full of sin? 



XXI 




Cbergbag ^tmonmsi 

OU know a little maiden 
who is as sweet as a 
peach until she loses her 
temper, when in a 
twinkling she is trans- 
formed into a little — de- 
mon. That is what you 
call her, and when you have seen her fall 
upon the floor, and tear her hair and almost 
foam at the mouth in her rage you do not 
feel that there is any other name for her. 
But when it is all over and the little thing 
is lying exhausted in her mother's arms 
and sobbing so pitifully, not in anger but 
in genuine sorrow for it all, you change 
your mind, and you are sure any other 
name would be better. 



EVERYDAY DEMONIACS 115 

You know a boy who is as good, as 
boys go, as any boy in the neighborhood — 
for a day. And the next day he will crowd 
into a single half-hour more fiendish deeds 
than an ordinary boy will do in a week. 
Yet, when it is all over, and you have 
asked him about it, you are convinced that 
he did not do it for revenge, or even for 
fun, or for any other reason in the wide 
world that he knows of. He simply can- 
not tell why he did it. And there are 
grown-up boys and girls that you and I 
know to whom come moments now and 
then when one seems to be born unto bad- 
ness as the sparks fly upward. And yet, 
when these moments have passed there is 
humiliation and sorrow beyond measure. 

I would not say that these are cases of 
demoniacal possession such as we find in 
the Bible story. They are not. But there 
are some very striking resemblances. In 
ancient times everybody looked upon a de- 
moniac as a hopeless case, and he was. No 
other human being was so completely 
bound. No human power could break his 



ii6 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

chains. But by and by Jesus came, and 
with superhuman power he broke them. 
And immediately hope came to birth in 
the hearts of those who had loved ones 
that were possessed by demons. If only 
the afflicted one could be brought to Jesus 
all would be well. 

To-day almost everybody looks upon the 
helpless victim of temper or drink or other 
horrible vice as a hopeless case. We know 
there is no slavery like the slavery of sin. 
I have seen men thrown by the drink de- 
mon as easily as a giant could trip up a 
little child. I have seen a man struggle 
against a horrible temper as a fly strug- 
gles in a spider's web. I have seen men 
who would have given their very lives to 
escape a vice that had entwined itself 
about them like an octopus. The world 
has tried every human means to break the 
chains of sin, and it has failed. Resolu- 
tions cannot do it. Education cannot do 
it. Will-power cannot do it. One's friends 
cannot do it. And because nothing we can 
do is of any avail, we sometimes grow dis- 



EVERYDAY DEMONIACS 117 

couraged and give up, and consent to be- 
lieve ever afterwards that there is no hope. 
But there is hope. Jesus has come. He 
who set the demoniacs free has also set 
free multitudes of men who have sinned 
as if they too were possessed of demons. 
He has saved the little maid from her ter- 
rible spasms of temper. He has saved that 
boy from his fiendish tendencies. He has 
saved an old man from vices that have 
grown up around him in an apparently 
hopeless tangle for half a century. And he 
can save you and me. Why should we be 
content to think of Christ as a savior from 
sins in general? Why should we not look 
to him to save us from our own sins in 
particular? 



XXI 




®tiat ^etfftibor of JHine 

HE first question to ask 
of anything we want to 
do is, Is it right? We 
want to know first of 
all if a thing is inno- 
cent in itself — if there 
is any sin or harm in 
it. If in answer to this question our con- 
sciences tell us that it is wrong, then there 
is no other question to ask. If a thing is 
wrong it is wrong, and there are no cir- 
cumstances whatever that will justify us 
in doing it. 

But if our consciences tell us that there 
is no sin in it, is there no other question to 
ask ? Some honest people think not. They 
think the highest question a man can ask 



THAT NEIGHBOR OF MINE 119 

of a thing he wants to do — especially if he 
is very anxious to do it — is, Is it right? 
"I have decided that there is no harm in 
this thing," says one, "and that settles it. 
If it does not hurt me that is all I want to 
know. I cannot take up the question of 
the possible effect it may have upon others; 
it is as much as a man can do to look after 
himself. Every tub must stand on its own 
bottom. My golden rule is to mind my 
own business and let other people's alone.'* 
But there is another question and it is far 
higher than the first. If I am a selfish man 
and my conscience tells me that this thing 
which I want to do is innocent in itself, 
that will be enough; but if I am a Chris- 
tian — if I have the spirit of Christ in me — 
I will not be satisfied; I will want to go 
further and ask, Can I do this thing with- 
out becoming a stumbling block to others ? 
I can do it without harm to myself, but 
can those who are influenced by my con- 
duct do it without harm? If I can not 
answer this question satisfactorily, the fact 
that the thing is innocent in itself will have 



120 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

no weight with me — that is, if I have the 
spirit of Christ in me. I will not do that 
which will bring harm to others^ however 
harmless it may be to me. 

It is one thing to avoid danger to one's 
self ; it is another thing to be concerned for 
the safety of others. Almost any sort of a 
man will ask whether a thing is right; it 
takes a Christian to inquire what effect his 
conduct may have upon his neighbor. 

You know that you can climb yonder 
mountain path, and though it is perilous 
if you were with another good climber you 
would not hesitate to make the venture; 
but you have a small, venturesome boy with 
you who insists on doing as he sees you 
do, and therefore instead of climbing that 
path just to show him how smart you are, 
you will take the other road that leads 
around the mountain, because you would 
not endanger that boy's life. This is what 
our Lord asks of us — that we should re- 
frain from taking those paths which, though 
safe to us, may be perilous to others. 

What you and I need to learn is that 



THAT NEIGHBOR OF MINE 121 

there are two directions in which we ought 
to look before deciding whether to do the 
thing we want to do. The first is toward 
God and the second is toward our neighbor. 
First, is this thing right ? Is it harmless in 
itself? Can I do it without sin? If we are 
not satisfied that it is right then we must 
not go further; but if our consciences are 
clear on this point then we must go fur- 
ther. We must ask the second question: 
Will it do my neighbor any harm ? 




XXIII 

^tebailins draper 

N the city in which I Hve 
are many rare and beau- 
tiful things in muse- 
ums and Hbraries which 
I have never seen 
though they are open to 
me every day. It is not 
because I have no taste for these things — 
I have been wanting to go and see them 
and have been intending to for years, but 
I have always put it off to-day because I 
knew I could go to-morrow. And to-mor- 
row, as we learn by and by, never comes. 
If I were only a visitor and expected to go 
home to-morrow I would see these things 
to-day. I wonder if this is why you and I 
so often neglect to enter into the secret 



PREVAILING PRAYER 123 

place of God. We are not indifferent. We 
do not dislike to pray, but there are always 
other things that we can do now and we 
know that we can seek his presence later 
on. And so we are continually postponing 
the enjoyment of our most precious privi- 
leges. Will we ever learn that procrastina- 
tion is not only the thief of time but also 
the thief of almost everything else that is 
precious? Shall we allow everything that 
is good to be stolen from us ? 

Sometimes this neglect is due to our 
difficulty in believing that God cares to 
have us come to him. There is one assur- 
ance in our Bible which ought to settle this 
question in our minds forever, and that is 
that the prayers of grateful hearts rise as 
sweet incense to God. It was God, not 
man, who first thought of the prayers of 
men as incense, and instituted the burning 
of incense in his sanctuary to represent 
them. But why should it be hard to be- 
lieve that God loves to hear us pray? Are 
not the petitions and entreaties of those 
who love us and whom we love very sweet 



124 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

to us? Would a father be happy whose 
children never asked anything of him? 

Some of us are always saying that we 
would pray oftener if we only knew how to 
pray. Yet our Lord has given us more 
explicit directions about praying than 
about any other duty. In the first place 
he has given us a model prayer to go by. 
Perhaps the most remarkable fact about 
the Lord's prayer is that it entirely reverses 
the usual order. Where Christ is not known 
a man goes to God thinking only of his 
own wants and will. It never occurs to 
him that God has any interests and that as 
a child of God he should think of God's 
interests, too. But, according to the model 
prayer which Jesus has given us a man, 
whatever his needs, should go to God con- 
cerned most of all for God's glory. The 
fact is, we are not in a condition to talk 
with God about our personal needs until 
we realize that we are a part of his king- 
dom and can ask him not so much to help 
us as to help his own. 

When we realize this and come to speak 



PREVAILING PRAYER 125 

of our personal needs we will be content 
to ask him to supply our immediate wants. 
As for our future wants, we need not be 
concerned about them, for the reason that 
we have constant access to him, and we 
know that he will not change, and that his 
storehouse will not fail; and besides, we 
will want to go to him every day anyhow. 
And we will ask him to supply our needs 
—not to satisfy our desires, seeing that 
what we desire is very apt to be what we 
do not need. We will ask for bread, and 
Vv^e will not insist on its being buttered. 
If we are thinking of our own interests 
and not of his, we will be more likely to 
ask for cigars than bread, and we will be 
sure to insist on his giving us that portion 
which belongeth to us in a lump. Then 
we will go off and play the prodigal and 
never come back until we have come to 
husks. 

You have noticed that when God fed 
Israel in the wilderness he gave them bread, 
not cake; necessities and not luxuries. It 
was not his purpose to indulge them. He 



126 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

had undertaken to carry them across the 
desert, and he would provide the means. 
He would not pamper them ; he would give 
them what they needed. One reason why 
there is so little of the spirit of praise and 
gratitude in our hearts is that we look to 
God for cake rather than bread. We want 
the sweetmeats of life. We go to him with 
our selfish wishes, asking not for the things 
that we need, but for the things we want; 
and because we do not get these things we 
are not grateful for the plain bread that 
comes to us. Many of us are like peevish 
children who dash the bread from the 
mother's hand because it is not cake, or 
because it is not sugar-coated. Is it any 
wonder that we are always saying that so 
many of our prayers are not answered? 
God is concerned about our little needs, 
but it is a mistake to think of him as an 
indulgent father who is willing to spoil us 
by giving us the things that are hurtful 
simply because he would not deny us. He 
wants us to be happy to-day, but he is 
planning for our happiness in the future; 



PREVAILING PRAYER 127 

and he is not going to provide for to-day's 
pleasure at the expense of future happiness. 
It may be well to ask him to deliver us 
from a present headache or heartache, or 
to provide enough money to-day to meet 
to-morrow's note in order that we may not 
worry ourselves over it; but after all, is it 
not time for us to be men, and if God does 
not choose to remove the headache can't 
we bear it like men and not fret and fume 
around him? And when we go to him to 
provide for to-morrow's note to-day so 
that we may be free from worry to-day, 
is it any better than a child saying to his 
mother, *Tell me I can go to the picnic 
to-morrow or I will cry all day?" We can 
trust God to care for us as babes so long 
as we are babes, to temper the wind to the 
shorn lamb so long as we are shorn lambs ; 
but if you and I have developed in grace, 
and have grown strong to bear, and endure 
for his sake, should we be forever crying 
to God to save us from every little pain, 
every little annoyance, every little thing 
that makes us worry ? Have we come thus 



128 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

far and not found the grace of God suffi- 
cient to overcome worry? 

But Jesus has not only given us a pat- 
tern prayer to go by; he has told us the 
spirit in which we must pray. For one 
thing we must be tremendously in earnest 
— importunate is the word. Importunity 
not only indicates earnestness, it begets 
earnestness. Our desires rise as we per- 
severe in asking. The more persistent we 
are in asking, the more eager we become 
for the door to be opened. And persist- 
ence has its reward. If an unjust judge can 
be worried into answering the prayer of a 
poor widow, how much more will a just 
God who loves to answer prayer, come to 
the help of his own in their time of need. 

Again, we must be humble. Here comes 
a proud Pharisee strutting up to the tem- 
ple to pray to God — or rather, as the story 
goes, "with himself." It would be difficult 
to imagine a Pharisee really praying, he 
could only plume himself, only pat his 
fullness to add to his comfort. Having 
reached the inner court, he turns round. 



PREVAILING PRAYER 129 

and having won the attention of the multi- 
tude strikes an attitude and enters upon 
his pious performance. *'God, I thank 
thee," he says. He says it but he does not 
mean it; he means to thank himself. The 
Pharisee always regards himself as a self- 
made man — the self-made man who is 
proud of his maker. *'I thank thee," he 
says, "that I am not as other men are." 
We who stand around and look on and lis- 
ten must laugh ; and yet is it not with some 
such spirit — is it not with just a little of 
this spirit that we often go to God in pray- 
er? Do we not say to ourselves confiden- 
tially by way of encouraging the belief that 
God will hear us that we are not like other 
folks ? Is there not a little feeling of superi- 
ority lurking somewhere, and the hope 
that our superiority will secure an answer? 
Do we not feel that God ought to bless us 
because we are Christians of enlightened 
America and not black heathen of darkest 
Africa? 

"I am not as other men are," said the 
Pharisee, and then he goes on to name the 



I30 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

men he is not like: "Extortioners, un- 
just, adulterers, or even as this publican." 
Alas! in looking about him for the men 
he is not like he sees no proud men, no 
selfish, avaricious men, no hot-tempered 
men, no bitter, malicious spirits. He sees 
only the sort he wants to see. But are we 
wholly guiltless in this matter ? Do we not 
see the things we want to see, and do we 
not try to hide our eyes from the truths we 
do not want to see ? 

And then he proceeds to spread out his 
virtues before the Lord — or rather before 
the assembled public, for it is his custom 
to pray aloud. "I fast twice in the week,'* 
he says with a flourish. He would have it 
understood by God and man that he fasts 
a hundred and three times more than the 
law requires. "I give tithes of all I acquire." 
The law requires tithes of corn, wine, oil, 
and cattle; he would have it understood 
that he exceeds the demands of the law; 
he gives tithes of everything, even to the 
trifling mint and anise and cummin. 

But standing over here in the court of 



PREVAILING PRAYER 131 

the heathen is a poor fellow in disgrace. 
And here, far away from the holy place this 
despised tax-gatherer offers his prayer to 
God. He has no pious garb to show off. 
He does not feel like striking an attitude — 
the load on his heart is too heavy. He 
cannot thank God that he is not like other 
men ; he feels that he is the chief of sinners. 
He does not try to display any virtues ; he 
would not flaunt his filthy rags in the face 
of heaven. He has no claims to make ; he 
has done nothing to bring God under obli- 
gation to him. He simply stands before 
God a poor, condemned sinner, conscious 
of his condition, and out of a broken heart, 
pleads for mercy without so much as lift- 
ing his head. 

Looking upon this picture need we ask 
if it is worth while to go to God at all un- 
less we can carry him an humble spirit? 

But above all when we pray we must 
pray trusting in God in the present tense. 
Here perhaps is our chief difficulty. It was 
the difficulty with the Israelites. They 
found it easy to trust God for the future. 



132 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

In some way or other in the dim distant 
future the Lord would provide. They 
could believe that. But when the future 
came to be the present their faith failed 
them. They could not trust God to deliver 
them from immediate starvation. They 
could trust him to overcome obstacles that 
were in the distance and out of sight, but 
they could not trust him to overcome ob- 
stacles that loomed up directly before 
them. They could not trust God in the 
present tense. And yet that is the only 
faith that is worth anything to us. The 
test of our confidence in God is the way 
we behave in the presence of immediately 
impending needs. 

Many of us have a way of making our 
religion a matter of the future — of the hour 
of death for instance, when we cannot do 
without it. We are trusting God to save 
us by and by, to carry us across the dark 
river, and to give us heaven at last. It is 
no difficult matter to trust him for these 
things when we have no idea of dying for 
a score of years to come, but the test of our 



PREVAILING PRAYER 133 

faith lies in our ability to calmly trust him 
in the face of a present reality. Can we 
look to him to help us, not to-morrow or 
next year, but this very moment? It is a 
little matter to say that God will provide 
a way through the sea and through the 
wilderness; but can we look to him to 
divide the sea when our feet are already 
wet with the spray? Can we trust him to 
send bread when the last morsel that we 
brought out of Egypt has disappeared? 

In other words can we pray for immedi- 
ate results ? All the old prophets who had 
power with God prayed for immediate re- 
sults. Nowadays we are told to pray as 
an exercise and to be satisfied if the exer- 
cise develops our spiritual strength wheth- 
er there are any direct results or not. But 
when Samuel prayed for rain he did not 
pray for exercise but for rain. Prayer is 
indeed a good exercise, but we are not 
told to knock in order to strengthen our 
muscles, but in order that the door may be 
opened. Jesus encourages us to pray, not 
as a pious exercise, but for results. If we 



134 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

ask, not to be asking, but to receive, we 
shall receive; if we seek, not because we 
think we ought to, but to find, we shall 
find ; if we knock, not as a pious exercise, 
feeling that while the door may not open 
the knocking will do us good, but believ- 
ing that the door will be opened, it will be 
opened. And we shall not only receive, 
but we shall receive that which is good. 
He does not say we shall receive precisely 
what we ask for, but he reminds us that we 
ask of a Father, and we know that we who 
are fathers would not give our children a 
Stone if they asked bread, nor a serpent 
if they asked for fish, nor a scorpion if they 
asked an egg. If we are sure that we, blind 
as we ofttimes are to the best interests of 
our children, will give them only that 
which is good, shall we have a doubt that 
our Father will give us that which is best 
— that he will even give the Holy Spirit 
to those who ask him? 




XXIV 

®tie iHeafifure of XiberaUtg 

IVING to the Lord is 
something more than 
honoring the collection- 
plate. It is something 
more than handing 
over one's money to a 
good cause. A man 
may turn over to his church a million dol- 
lars a year and never give to the Lord a 
penny. Giving is a matter of the heart as 
well as of the pocket. The penny you toss 
to the beggar is not a gift: it is only the 
amount you pay to get rid of him or to 
bring peace to a disturbed conscience. 
Many a dime put into the collection-plate 
is only a cheap bidTdr respectability. 
Your typical modern Cain is not a mur- 



136 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

derer. He is the man who goes to God 
with an unacceptable offering. He is the 
man who has made his money dishonestly, 
and who instead of repenting of his sins 
and going to God with his sin-offering, 
goes with a thank-offering in the shape of 
a large bill for the collection-plate, or an 
endowment for some Christian college. It 
is so much easier to consume one per cent, 
of one's dishonest earnings burning in- 
cense to heaven in the sight of men, than 
to make restitution of one's ill-gotten gains 
to those one has wronged. 

The measure of a gift is not the money 
that is in it, but the love that goes with it. 
If no love goes with it, there is no gift 
though it involve a million dollars : if love 
goes with it, it is a gift though it cost but 
a penny. 

. We easily recognize this truth in every- 
day life. We know full well that a gift 
to a friend to be a gift must be accom- 
panied by the heart — that it is the heart 
that goes with it that makes it a gift. We 
are never concerned about the value of 



MEASURE OF LIBERALITY 137 

anything that comes to us from another 
until we are assured that it is accompanied 
by the love of the sender and that it is not 
a bid for a present in return ; and we know 
perfectly well that, however valuable it 
may be, if it is sent to us grudgingly or of 
necessity we can never regard it as a gift. 
Why can we not use the same common- 
sense in our dealings with God that we use 
in our dealings with our fellow-men? We 
ask a great many questions about the 
Christian duty of giving. We have placed 
it among the perplexing problems of life. 
Has it never occurred to us that we never 
ask questions about the duty of giving 
when we have in mind a gift to a father 
or a friend? There is no mystery about 
that matter. If we would only think of 
God as our father, or as our friend, our 
commonsense would tell us very quickly 
whether our gifts to him are what they 
ought to be or not. We know very well 
that we would not try to palm ofif a sick 
sheep or a lame bullock on a friend. We 
know just as well that if we desired to ex- 



138 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

press our friendship by a gift, we would 
not make the round of all the bargain 
stores in town to see how cheap and shoddy 
a thing we could find; we would not give 
to a friend a brass ring and call it a gold 
one. 

Whatever may be our profession, how- 
ever zealous we may appear in the worship 
of God, however liberal we may be reputed 
to be, if we deliberately withhold from God 
his due, if we try to reduce the cost of our 
religion, if we try to make it appear to men 
that we are doing more for God than we 
are doing, our religion is hollow; our wor- 
ship is an insult to the Almighty. There is 
no heart in it ; there is only the sin of Ana- 
nias and Sapphira in it. 

You and I love a cheerful giver ; a liberal 
giver; one who puts his heart in what he 
gives; one who never sends anything to a 
friend, if it be but a flower or a note, that 
he does not send his love with it. So does 
God. 




XXV 

iHafeins tfje iWosit of tfje ^abbatt) 

ABBATH desecration is 
so common that we 
have almost lost con- 
sciousness of it, as one 
dwelling by the sea 
loses consciousness of 
its roar. Besides, we 
are prone to think of the Sabbath as having 
no other reason for its existence than the 
arbitrary command of God; and there is 
too much human obstinacy in us to feel 
very deeply the sin of disobeying a com- 
mand for which we see no adequate reason. 
Yet, as a matter of fact, when we come to 
think of it, no other commandment appeals 
more strongly to our judgment. The Sab- 
bath is not an arbitrary arrangement at all : 
it has its reason to be in the necessities of 



I40 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

our nature. The Sabbath was made for 
man because God foresaw that man would 
need it. 

Our bodies need it. We have heard this 
so often that we have ceased to take it 
seriously. But it is not a matter of opinion 
which may be accepted or slighted, it is a 
matter of fact and a fact must always be 
taken seriously. One has only to look at 
those races which have no Sabbath. A 
man can accomplish more if he will rest 
one day in the week than he can accomp- 
lish by working seven days in the week. 
The industrial history of mankind is one 
vast pile of testimony in behalf of the Sab- 
bath. And the brain needs it even more 
than the muscle. The intellectual history 
of mankind is one vast pile of testimony in 
behalf of the Sabbath. 

Above all, our souls need it. The ten- 
dency of the man who is at work in the 
midst of the world is downward, not up- 
ward. If left to himself he becomes more 
and more engrossed in the things of earth, 
and more and more partakes of the nature 



THE SABBATH 141 

of the earth. It is only a question of time 
when he will bury himself in the earth. Or, 
to change the figure, we are like children 
playing in the surf. It is not our disposi- 
tion to go ashore. We want to go out 
among the breakers. Left to ourselves we 
will wander outward, not inward. God 
saw this disposition in us and he provided 
the Sabbath, as a father sometimes ties a 
rope about the waist of his little boy play- 
ing in the surf. The little fellow wanders 
out the full length of the rope and pres- 
ently is brought up with a jerk. He real- 
izes where he is. He remembers his father 
at the other end of the rope. He turns 
back to his father. So God has provided 
the Sabbath as a rope to bring us up at the 
end of the week — with a jerk that will 
bring us to our senses; that will cause us 
to look around and see where we are and 
how far we have wandered, and how far 
we are from the Father's hand. But for 
thy Sabbaths, O God, how soon would we 
forget thee ! 

Again, it is just as important to have a 



142 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

day set apart for the formal worship of 
God as it is to have stated hours of each 
day to say one's prayers. We are disposed 
to make Httle of forms and times and sea- 
sons; but we know full well that when a 
man gives up his stated hours for prayer 
because, as he says, he intends to pray 
without ceasing, it is only a question of 
time and a very short time when he will 
cease to pray altogether. Our devotions 
at the morning and evening hours may 
often be mere forms, but the tendency of 
these hours is to keep alive the spirit of 
prayer. We set apart an hour for prayer, 
not that we may give that one hour to 
prayer and the rest of our time to other 
things, but that we may make all of our 
hours prayerful. So God has set apart the 
Sabbath for his worship, not that we may 
worship God one day in the week, but that 
the ever-recurring sacred day may help to 
keep alive the spirit of worship so that we 
will worship God seven days in the week. 
He that breaks the Sabbath sins against 
God by disregarding his expressed will; 



THE SABBATH 143 

sins against society which he thereby helps 
to demoralize; sins against his body and 
mind which need the rest from toil which 
the Sabbath gives; sins against his soul 
which needs the Sabbath for its develop- 
ment. 

But there is a way to keep the Sabbath 
and a way not to keep it. For centuries 
before Jesus came the observance of the 
Sabbath had been a chief part of the Jew's 
religion. He had stood by it through thick 
and thin. He had not hesitated to shed 
his blood for it. Now that through 
rabbinical refinements it had become griev- 
ous to be borne it wa^ still as dear as life 
to him. To perfectly observe the law of 
the Sabbath was to mount to the top round 
of the ladder where one could sit and bask 
in the sunshine of Heaven and be proud 
forever. Having become ambitious to ful- 
fill the law with an eye to reward, both 
from God and men, the Jew had naturally 
lost sight of its design, and had learned to 
think of it as a purely arbitary command. 
It was to him just what an edict of society 



144 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

is to a society woman. The society woman 
does not stop to learn what is intended to 
be accomplished by the edict ; it is enough 
for her to know that the woman who comes 
nearest to a literal fulfillment of society's 
edicts reaches the top where the cream is 
supposed to be. But in her attempt to 
reach the top she has often violated the 
spirit of the edict ; and thus it has happened 
that many laws which were put forth by 
society with really good intentions, have 
become mill stones about the necks of its 
devotees. So, in the effort to reach the 
top round of the ladder by a literal fulfill- 
ment of the law, the Jew, having no 
thought of the design of the law, violated 
its spirit until it became a burden instead 
of a help. 

When Jesus came he laid down a great 
test principle by the side of the rabbinical 
additions to the law. That test principle 
read, *'I will have mercy and not sacrifice.'* 
The principle called for mercy but the rab- 
binical additions called for sacrifices and 



THE SABBATH 145 

not mercy. Indeed they were themselves 
unmerciful. And because they neither 
moved to mercy nor showed mercy them- 
selves he condemned them. **It is lawful 
— it is right and proper — to do well on the 
Sabbath day.'' 

A religious form of observance is intend- 
ed to help men, not to hurt them. That 
is a wrong keeping of the Sabbath that 
shuts up the door of mercy, or any door 
through which we may send or receive 
that which is good. For the Sabbath was 
made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 

And after all, the highest law of the Sab- 
bath is not the command to abstain from 
work, but the command to keep the Sab- 
bath holy. If, in the effort to keep the 
Sabbath holy one must work, as the priests 
did in the temple, and as the preacher must 
do in the pulpit, there is no sin, for the 
higher law eclipses the lower. The law 
calls for cessation from labor in order that 
one may have opportunity to look after his 
highest interests. Cessation from work 
alone is not obedience to the law, for we 



%46 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

^know that an idle brain is the devil's work- 
Shop. But while deeds of mercy find a 
favoring atmosphere on the Sabbath day 
we should not allow even these to crowd 
out the quiet hour which the soul needs to 
look into its own affairs. 

Am I in doubt as to whether I ought to 
do a certain thing on the Sabbath day? 
The test principle is before me : let me ap- 
ply that. Is it an act of mercy ? Very well : 
God wants mercy — wants to see me merci- 
ful, wants to see me doing merciful deeds 
— whether it is Sunday or Monday. 

But let us remember that the distinctive 
spirit of the Sabbath is the spirit of wor- 
ship. If there is no worship there is no 
Sabbath. If one loves to worship one will 
love the Sabbath. If one does not love to 
worship he will not love the Sabbath. 

There comes before my mind's eye as I 
write these words the vision of a form long 
bent with the bearing of many burdens. 
The dear face is chiselled deep with pain 
and midnight watching. She is a woman 
of sorrows and acquainted with grief. You 



THE SABBATH 147 

wonder as you look at her if she ever has 
a moment's pleasure; and presently you 
venture to ask her. Instantly the worn face 
lights up. 

*'Why, certainly," she answers. "I am 
happy every day. No one can enjoy any- 
thing more than I enjoy my hours of wor- 
ship. I am so glad when I can drop every- 
thing and spend a few moments alone with 
my Lord. And I am so glad when Sun- 
day comes and I can go to worship with 
God's people. It is such a joy to me to go 
to church, for I love God's kingdom more 
than I can tell.'* 

One does not hear words like these of- 
ten, but one hears them. There is another 
tune of a more familiar turn. 

"I am always sorry" — the name of this 
speaker is Legion — "when Sunday comes, 
and I have to go to church. I never yet 
found any pleasure in it. The whole thing 
is a bore. I don't see much in the church 
anyway: seems to me there's nothing but 
discord and injustice and — well I confess I 
never think of praying for its peace. As 



148 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

for private prayer, I would not like for 
everybody to know it, but I don't enjoy 
that either. I never could see where the 
profit comes in." 

What is the secret of the difference be- 
tween these two voices? The answer is 
easy. One finds joy in her devotions be- 
cause she is devoted; the other gets noth- 
ing out of his devotions because he is not 
devoted. 

He that would have heartfelt pleasure 
in the Sabbath must find pleasure in the 
worship of God, and he that would find 
heartfelt pleasure in the worship of God 
must give his whole heart to God. The 
writer of the Psalms is full of joy because 
he is full of devotion. He is glad to go to 
the house of God because he loves God. 
His heart swells within him at the sight of 
Jerusalem because it is the place where 
he goes to testify to his love for God. His 
joy springs from his love. His religion is 
an affair of the heart. 

Whatever we may define to be the secret 
of a happy life it is certain that there is no 



THE SABBATH 149 

happiness either on Sunday or Monday 
where there is no love. Do you want your 
life to be one unfaiHng stream of happi- 
ness? Then see that the fountain at the 
head of the stream is filled with love. You 
may have sorrow and trials above measure, 
but you will know joy. Would you find 
your religion a delight ? Look to your love 
for God. With increase of love will come 
increase of joy. 



XXVI 




Jfll^ou are SIrulg ^orrg 

OU disobeyed God yes- 
terday. Whatever the 
circumstances — wheth- 
er you did it in heat or 
in cold — you cut clear 
across the grain of 
God's will and broke his 
commandments. And to-day, though the 
sun is shining as brightly upon the tree- 
tops as ever, there is no sunshine in your 
heart, and you are standing on the verge 
of despair as a man with a mill-stone about 
his neck. What punishment is there too 
great for one who has done so ignobly? 
What hope can there be for one who has 
done despite to the grace of God ? Listen : 
"You have done wrong," says Samuel to 



IF YOU ARE SORRY 151 

Israel ; ''it is indeed a grievous sin which 
you have committed; but if you will re- 
pent, if you will turn unto the Lord and 
from this moment obey his voice in all 
things, all shall be well with you." 

And Samuel was speaking to a people 
who had solemnly promised to have only 
God for their king, and who had deliber- 
ately turned their backs upon him and de- 
manded another king in his stead. Per- 
haps that is the very sin you committed 
yesterday. Certainly, you did nothing 
worse. Perhaps you turned away from 
God, and instead of being ruled by him al- 
lowed yourself to be ruled by selfishness, 
or greed, or sinful appetite. It was a ter- 
rible thing to do — there is no doubt about 
that — there is no glossing it; nevertheless, 
if you are really sorry for this sin you have 
committed, if you are really grieved that 
you should have thus treated Him who has 
done so much for you, if to-day you would 
rather cut off your right hand than do 
such a thing again, if your heart is broken 
over it, if you are striving from this mo- 



152 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

ment to obey God with all your heart and 
never forsake him again — then you may 
jput away your tears and fears and look up 
with the assurance that God is not frown- 
ing upon you, but that he is standing wait- 
ing to forgive and to take your hand again 
and lead you in his own way. The one 
question for the contrite heart Is not, "How 
great was the sin of yesterday?" but ''How 
great is the repentance of to-day?'' — not 
whether the sin of yesterday was more 
seeming than real, but whether the re- 
pentance of to-day is more seeming than 
real. If I am sure about my repentance it 
matters not about the greatness of my sin, 
for the greatest sin is not so great as our 
Savior from sin. If I am sorry, not because 
my sin has made me miserable, nor simply 
because I have brought myself into con- 
demnation, but because I have grieved Him 
who died for me — if I am sorry enough 
to cease grieving him who died for me then 
all shall be well. 

This is the teaching of the Book from 
beginning to end. To doubt it is to turn 



IF YOU ARE SORRY 153 

away from one's Bible, one's anchor, one's 
hope and to plunge into the gulf of de- 
spair; to accept it is to turn away from 
one's sins and plunge into the stream of 
salvation. 




XXVII 

tETtie ^m of (EPfioustitlesfftnet^si 

HEN thoughtlessness 
makes us ungrateful it 
is a vice ; when it makes 
us cruel it is a crime; 
when it soothes us off 
to slumber unprepared 
for the final awakening, 
it is a — but there is no word to express it. 
The world is very easy with the thought- 
less. "Oh ! he didn't mean anything ; he 
was just thoughtless." ''He isn't cruel ; he 
just didn't think." "He is not ungrateful ; 
he simply does not stop to reflect." We are 
always ready to excuse the sins of the 
thoughtless, provided they are not com- 
mitted against ourselves. We don't want 



THOUGHTLESSNESS 155 

an employee to be thoughtless — that is too 
exasperating. The first offence is annoy- 
ing; the second is inexcusable. And we 
are indignant as to the thoughtlessness of 
those for whom we have done a favor. We 
insist that it is their business to think. It 
is a very ugly sin when it hurts our busi- 
ness or destroys our comfort, but it is a 
very small matter to our minds when it is 
a sin against God. "Oh ! boys will be 
boys," we say, and we readily excuse their 
sowing of wild oats, when, if they had sown 
their wild oats on our own land, we would 
have said something altogether different. 
We excuse a young girl's wildness on the 
ground that it is the nature of a girl to be 
giddy, and we excuse our own forgetful- 
ness of God on the ground that we have 
so many things to think of. And yet when 
we come to think of it, this very thing 
which we are so ready to excuse in our- 
selves is at the bottom of many of our 
troubles, perhaps, and most of our failures. 
It is thoughtlessness more than anything 
else that imperils our future. 



156 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

Those five foolish maidens of whom 
Jesus tells us did not mean to do anything 
wrong; they were not lacking in their re- 
spect for the bridegroom; they simply did 
not think. The other five were ready be- 
cause they thought. It is easy to say that 
we do no harm, that we have the deepest 
reverence for God and for his law and all 
that; but the question is, are we ready? 
Have we been thoughtful enough to pro- 
vide for his coming? We may excuse our 
lack of preparation on the ground that we 
do not know what our Lord's coming 
means, but we certainly know that prac- 
tically our Lord does come to everyone at 
the moment of death, and we cannot avoid 
the question. Are we ready for that mo- 
ment? Are we watching for his coming? 
Not watching idly; not watching by plac- 
ing our finger on our pulse now and then 
and counting its life beats ; not watching by 
counting the days as they pass ; but watch- 
ing by being ready. Watchfulness is a state 
of preparedness. The five wise maidens 
were prepared for the bridegroom's com- 



THOUGHTLESSNESS 157 

ing, and it was not a very serious matter 
if they should grow drowsy while waiting. 
The five foolish ones were not prepared 
and to sleep was suicide. If we have that 
in our hearts which makes us ready for 
his coming — if we have that in us which 
will not make his coming like the cry of 
fire at midnight — if we are trusting him as 
our Savior — if we have given our lives into 
his keeping — if we have laid our all upon 
his altar — if we are his children — then we 
can go forth to the day's labor in safety, 
because we abide under the shadow of the 
Almighty ; and we may lay ourselves down 
in peace and sleep; **for thou Lord only 
makest me to dwell in safety." 



XXVIII 



mt tfie ^pptoatfi of JBmQtx 




HE very first thing to do 
when dan ger ap- 
proaches is to go 
straight to our Protec- 
tor. If we fail to do this 
it will be because we 
have not learned to 
think of God as our refuge. When we go 
to him we may ask him to avert the storm, 
but we must not insist upon it ; as his chil- 
dren we may only claim protection, and he 
may choose to let the storm come and to 
protect us in it. If we thus go to God, 
throwing ourselves upon him as our pre- 
server, we will not tempt his providence by 
sitting down and waiting for the danger 
to come without doing what we can to 



APPROACH OF DANGER 159 

prepare to meet it. And if we have thrown 
ourselves upon him we will not feel like 
dropping our daily duties and thus neglect- 
ing the work he has given us to do. "When 
I see a danger approaching/' says one, "I 
am all in a flutter, and I just can't go on 
with my work until it has passed." The 
trouble with this poor flutterer is that he 
has not planted his feet on the rock. When 
the danger appears in the distance he does 
not fly to God ; he simply spreads his wings 
and — flutters. If a man opens his house to 
save you from a pursuing enemy you will 
feel like rendering him a service. You will 
feel all the better if he will give you some- 
thing to do. So when we go to God for 
protection in time of danger we will not 
want to sit down and idle away the time 
until the storm is past; we will want to 
keep busy doing the work he has given us 
to do. For when a man is working for God 
he knows that he is under the protection of 
God. The "shadow of the Almighty" ex- 
tends all along the path of duty, and we 



i6o LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

have no assurance that it extends beyond 
it. 

Sitting down to wait for an impending 
danger of any sort is the poorest possible 
preparation for meeting it ; for while we are 
waiting we are neglecting our daily duties 
and losing the strength which God gives 
us for our daily duties. The battle is al- 
ready lost to him who waits in idleness and 
disobedience for the coming of the enemy. 
Keep straight on in the path of duty and 
it will find you equipped for the fray, in 
full armor, in possession of well-exercised 
faculties, strong in a good conscience and 
in the strength which God supplies through 
his eternal Son. 




XXIX 

^ Morb iHtiout Wtmptation 

HE human heart has al- 
ways been secretly dis- 
posed to hold God re- 
sponsible for its own 
sins. If it be said that 
God created all things, 
our perverse natures at 
once ask if he did not create sin, and if it 
is answered that sin is not a thing, but an 
act of the mind or the heart or the body, 
we immediately ask if God did not make 
our minds, our hearts, and our bodies^ 
Like Adam, we want to put the blame for 
our misconduct upon our Benefactor. But 
we are taught not only that God is not the 
author of evil, but that he is in no sense, 
responsible for it, unless indeed we wish 



i62 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 



to hold him responsible for making us men 
with wills of our own and the power to 
choose, rather than tin soldiers. God did 
not bring sin into the world. He gave us 
hearts endowed with power to open either 
to good or evil but he did not open our 
hearts to evil, and he did not prepare the 
evil and give it power to open our hearts. 
Evil was not inherent in the world. It 
was not the natural outcome of God's work 
of creation. It came from without ; it came 
from an outlaw; it came from the enemy 
of God. By no sort of means can we in any 
way atone for our offenses by placing any 
blame upon God. As an evidence that the 
coming of sin into the world was not of 
his own doing, we have him meeting sin 
with a plan of redemption. The very mo- 
ment evil enters the world God provides a 
way to deliver man from it. Satan is the 
author of evil. God is the author of re- 
demption from evil. 

"Could not God have man so that he 
could not have sinned?" He could have 
made something which might have been 



ABOUT TEMPTATION 163 

called a man but it would not have been a 
man. For the very thing that differentiates 
man from the lower animals is his moral 
nature — that within him which discerns 
and chooses between good and evil. If he 
had been made so that he would have no 
choice between good and evil he would 
have had no moral nature at all — his good- 
ness would have been merely the good- 
ness of a machine that runs smoothly and 
does the work for which it was designed. 
Is there any virtue in a good thing that 
you do because you cannot help yourself? 
If a brigand saves a man's life in order to 
secure the man's treasure does he deserve 
any credit for not killing him? 

But if we cannot blame God for our sins, 
neither can we excuse ourselves on the 
ground that Satan tempts us to sin. Satan 
does tempt us to do wrong, but he does 
not force us to do wrong. No monster 
roams up and down this world pouncing 
upon helpless men and women and forcing 
them to sin. Besides, God nowhere con- 
demns us for being tempted ; the sin is not 



i64 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

in being tempted but in yielding. We arc 
not responsible for being tempted any 
more than we are responsible for a robber's 
breaking into our house; but we are re- 
sponsible for a robber's entrance if he 
comes in through a door which we have 
left unlocked, and we are responsible for 
the entrance of the tempter if we leave the 
doors and windows of our minds wide open 
and unguarded. The man who unneces- 
sarily enters a place of sin does wrong 
whether he comes out whole or not; he 
has no right to expose his soul to the 
darts of the destroyer. Jesus did not go 
into the wilderness to be tempted ; he went 
because he was led by the Spirit. We may 
safely go where God leads us. 

But, says one, "There was Daniel who 
lived amid all the corruption of an oriental 
court and yet kept himself unspotted from 
the world: why may I not do the same?" 
The answer is plain. The protecting arm 
of God, the shadow of the Almighty, cov- 
ers the whole path of duty. If when walk- 
ing in the path of duty we come to a place 



ABOUT TEMPTATION 165 

of temptation we are still under God's pro- 
tection. But if in following our own pleas- 
ure we deliberately choose a place of temp- 
tation we are not walking in the path of 
duty — we are not dwelling in *'the secret 
place of the Most High'' — and therefore 
we do not "abide under the shadow of the 
Almighty." 

There are five little rules you must 
adopt if you want to overcome temptation. 
First, never of your own will put yourself 
in the way of the tempter. ''Enter not 
into the path of the wicked, and go not 
in the way of evil men." If you are in the 
path of duty God will keep you, but if you 
go aside you cannot look to him. Second, 
never look upon forbidden fruit. "Look 
not thou upon the wine when it is red." 
Third, never parley with the devil. "Re- 
sist the devil and he will flee from you." 
Fourth, keep the fear of God before you. 
"Fear not them which kill the body but are 
not able to kill the soul: but rather fear 
him which is able to destroy both soul and 
body in hell." The fear of God keeps a man 



i66 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

out of sin; the fear of man keeps him in 
sin. Fifth, keep yourself well in hand. *'I 
keep under my body and bring it into sub- 
jection/' 

There are some simple stories in the Bible 
which we have never found use for except 
to amuse our children, that teach us more 
about overcoming temptation than all the 
learned sermons we have ever read. Take 
for example the story of David and Goliath 
which to most of us is only a disagreeable 
tale of blood. Every David has his Go- 
liath. More than once in a life-time we 
wake up on a cloudy morning to find that 
some giant temptation has challenged us 
to a fight. David killed his giant enemy; 
may we not learn from him how we can 
kill ours? 

Here comes a worldly-wise-man who 
says : "I think I understand it. David was 
a shrewd fellow. He always knew what to 
do, and the very nick of time in which to 
do it. He knew, for instance, just when 
to catch the lion by the beard. It was the 
most natural thing in the world for a man 



ABOUT TEMPTATION 167 

of David's shrewdness to stop at the brook, 
pick up a smooth stone, twirl it in his sling, 
and send it crashing through the giant's 
brain/' There is a good deal in what Mr. 
Worldly-wise-man says. God intends us 
to use our comm.on sense in fighting our 
temptations, and there is no better way 
than to dip down into the old Book, and 
pick up some smooth stone of a promise, 
and put it in the sling of faith, and let it 
fly against every temptation that comes in 
sight. But the divine side is uppermost 
in every conquest. David knew his chances 
and used them ; but suppose he had missed 
his aim? 

Three things helped David in this fight. 
In the first place, he called to mind his 
former deliverances. Goliath was a ter- 
rible looking monster, but not to be feared 
above the lion and bear out of whose paws 
God had delivered him. If God could de- 
liver him from a lion and a bear, he could 
deliver him from a man who had defied the 
armies of the living God. We are very 
happy when God delivers us out of the 



i68 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

lion's paw, and we think we will never 
doubt him, and never get discouraged 
again ; but the next lion we meet frightens 
the very thought of God out of our minds, 
and we are as weak as ever. The lion 
you meet to-day seems bigger than the 
lion you killed a year ago, simply because 
last year's lion is a dead lion, and far off 
at that. It strengthens us for the struggle 
to keep in mind our past deliverances. If 
God has helped us in the past, it is the best 
evidence in the world that he will help us 
again. 

In the second place, David remembered 
that the battle was the Lord's. If it was 
God's battle, God's honor was at stake, 
and God would take care of that. If we 
are in God's ranks, then the battle is the 
Lord's. If we are out of his ranks, we are 
defenseless. If we are in his ranks, his 
arm is about us; and the man who feels 
the Arm about him is water-proof, fire- 
proof, bullet-proof against every power of 
darkness. 

Finally, David realized the superiority 



ABOUT TEMPTATION 169 

of spiritual equipment over all earthly ar- 
mor. ''Thou comest to me with a sword 
and with a spear, and with a shield ; but I 
come unto thee in the name of the Lord of 
hosts, whose armies thou hast defied." The 
name of the Lord is the only omnipotent 
weapon against temptation. We bring to 
bear our sense of self-respect against a 
temptation only to find that the temptation 
is just a little stronger than our sense of 
self-respect. You say you do not do this 
because you are a church-member; but 
sometimes you will happen upon a tempta- 
tion just a little stronger than your love 
for the church. You bring to bear your 
will-power, only to find that your tempta- 
tion is too strong for that. There are temp- 
tations that will overcome everything but 
the name of the Lord of hosts. Before that 
name every giant goes down. 



XXX 



Helper of tfie ^elplesfs: 




HILE the world is show- 
ering its gifts upon the 
rich, showing courtesy 
to those who are over- 
whelmed with courte- 
sies, sending Sunday 
dinners to neighbors 
whose tables are already overburdened, of- 
fering the pleasure of their company to 
people whose parlors are always crowded, 
Jesus turns aside into an unfrequented 
path and seeks out the forsaken and lonely 
to give them a lift. Men look upon the 
world going its way and upon Jesus going 
his way and decide that it is better to fol- 
low the world. But is it better? Is it bet- 
ter to waste a dollar upon one who does 



HELPER OF THE HELPLESS 171 

not need it and will not appreciate it than 
to use it where every penny will count? 
Is there more pleasure in treating a rich 
man's son to ice-cream than there is in 
watching a pauper's child suck his first 
orange bought with your money? Will it 
make you happier to contribute a hundred 
thousand dollars to a millionaire college 
than to give a thousand dollars to educate 
the bright boy of a poor ambitious mother 
who is struggling at the washtub to send 
her son to school? 

Here is a man who, for thirty-eight years, 
has been a helpless invalid. During this 
whole time he has been hoping to get well, 
doubtless, like other invalids. For some 
time his hopes have centered upon a spring 
which is popularly supposed to have mi- 
raculous curative properties. Day by day 
he has dragged himself painfully to the 
porch of the spring and waited for an op- 
portunity to test its virtues. Day after day 
his heart has throbbed wildly with hope as 
he has struggled forward to reach the bub- 
bling water, and has sunk within him again 



172 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

as another has stepped down before him 
and shut him off. It has happened so many 
times that the poor fellow has almost given 
up. Still, with every morning comes new 
hope, and he drags his withered body back 
to the spring again. He is not only utterly 
helpless, but there is not one to help him. 
No friend will stay by him and wait for the 
bubbling of the water. Helpless and friend- 
less he lies there in the porch waiting, hop- 
ing against hope. 

Do you wonder that this man attracts 
the eye of Jesus as he passes by? No; 
you would wonder if anything else should 
attract him at that moment, for all that we 
have ever learned of Jesus has taught us 
that it is the one who needs him most, the 
most helpless case, that tugs hardest at his 
heart-strings. We can hardly conceive that 
he would notice anyone else at the pool 
first, unless there was someone else whose 
case was more urgent. If he would walk 
among us to-day all the world would know 
what to expect of him. All the world 
would know just where he would go, and 



HELPER OF THE HELPLESS 173 

just what he would see, and just how he 
would employ his time. We know — we 
know absolutely — that the thing that is on 
his heart is to help the helpless — to help 
those who need him most — if they will let 
him help them. We know that he would 
not spend his time with those who did not 
need him, or who were not conscious of 
needing him, and who would not open their 
hearts that he might help them. 

We know this and yet in our hour of ex- 
tremity we wonder if Jc'sus is thinking of 
us, if he really cares, if he is planning a 
way of escape for us, if he ever intends to 
come to us. The whole story of his life is 
a story of the helper helping the helpless, 
and yet when we are most helpless we are 
most prone to doubt that he will come to 
our help. Oh, that to-day we might have 
a vision of Jesus as the Helper of the help- 
less ! If we could only realize deep down 
in our hearts that our extremity is his op- 
portunity — that he loves to help those who 
feel their need of him, and that he loves 
most to help those who feel their need of 
him most! 




XXXI 

tCije &U'^ntiititnt jFrienb 

ESUS came down into the 
world because he was 
interested in its inhabi- 
tants. After he had done 
his task for us and gone 
back he came again in 
a vision to John on 
Patmos, simply because he was interested 
in us. He wanted John to write a letter to 
Tiis churches because he had been thinking 
about his people and was deeply interested 
in them. Ever since then he has been com- 
ing to his people simply because he has 
been interested in us. 

Who is it that is interested in us? In a 
time of great darkness there is comfort in 
knowing that anyone is interested in us. 



ALL-SUFFICIENT FRIEND 175 

There is consolation in the sympathy of a 
little child who can do nothing for us — 
who can only look up into our faces with 
helpless pity. But the vision of Patmos tells 
us that in our darkest hour the One who is 
most interested in us is no less a being 
than a king — nay, the King of Kings — our 
Lord himself. He is eternal. There is no 
danger that he will cease to be or that he 
will ever change in his feelings toward us. 
There is no danger that he will lose inter- 
est in our case before we have passed 
through this great shadow. He is the 
Unchanging One. He is the All-seeing One. 
There is no danger that he will fail to ap- 
preciate our circumstances. We need not 
fear that he does not know the depth of 
our sorrow or our perplexity. He knows 
our trouble better than we know it our- 
selves, and he can make no mistake as to 
the remedy. He is the Swift-footed One. 
Those feet that appear like burnished brass 
of dazzling brightness speak to us of eter- 
nal vigilance. Sometimes we think we have 
found a friend in need and to-morrow that 



176 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

friend grows weary of well-doing and we 
see him no more. Jesus never wearies. 
Jesus never fails to come. What a won- 
derful picture is here of the all-sufficieut 
Friend and Comforter. In him is every- 
thing we need. He lacks nothing. He is a 
perfect comforter. He is a perfect helper. 
And this perfect helper is with us — not 
eyeing us from afar off, not watching us 
to see if we are going to disobey him, not 
looking coldly upon us, not absenting him- 
self now and then from us — but he is one 
with us; closer to us than our closest 
friend, closer to us than our own voice, 
closer to us than our inmost thoughts. 




XXXII 

S^fie Qitntf) iltiout ^oh'si Care 

E that dwelleth in the se- 
cret place of the Most 
High shall abide under 
the shadow of the Al- 
mighty." We have read 
this so often that it is 
difficult to grasp its 
wonderful meaning. Let us make no mis- 
take. God protects his people. He does 
not coddle them, but he protects them. He 
may not shield us from every change of 
temperature, from the winter's sleet or the 
summer's heat, from headaches or the blues 
which our own imprudence has invited, 
but he protects us. That is to say, he pro- 
tects us as men and women, not as babies 
or shorn lambs that must ever have the 



178 LITTLE GUIDE POSTS 

March winds tempered for them. God has 
nowhere promised to shield us from the 
thousand-and-one petty annoyances of Hfe 
from which we are always praying to be 
delivered, and without which we would 
have nothing, on the human side, to de- 
velop our strength, our courage, or our 
patience. God did not shield the children 
of Israel from the discomforts and trials of 
their night journey across the sandy bed 
of the sea, but he protected them. He stood 
between them and their enemies. He did 
not carry them to the promised land on 
flowery beds of ease; he made them walk 
every step of the way; but he protected 
them on the way. God put us here in the 
world that we might grow up hardy plants 
— fruit-bearing trees that are better for the 
cold and heat, and the March winds that 
whistle through their branches — not deli- 
cate hothouse plants that must be forever 
waited on, and for all one's waiting bring 
forth nothing but flowers. 

We must get rid of the morbid, invalid 
ideas of providence which lurk in our 



ABOUT GOD'S CARE 179 

minds. Some of us think that if God loves 
us it would hurt him to see one of our fin- 
gers bleed. We are always going to him 
like babies and crying to him about our 
sleepless nights and our musquito bites 
that have come to us by our own improvi- 
dence. We are always praying for the com- 
fort of our bodies, as if the body was the 
chief thing. God is infinite in compassion 
and we may be sure he does not want to 
see any of his children suffer, but he is 
concerned about us rather than about our 
mere visible selves — our bodies which are 
the mere clothing of our inner selves. A 
father does not want to see his daughter's 
fine, new dress torn, but if it should catch 
fire he would not hesitate to tear it to 
shreds to save his daughter's life. So God 
does not want to see our bodies hurt, but 
he is willing that they should suffer any- 
thing and everything for the sake of our 
souls. And so while God may often pro- 
tect our clothes, our property, our bodies — 
the external things which surround our 
real selves — he will not hesitate to let them 



i8o LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

all go rather than that the real self, the 
soul, should suffer. 

God not only shields his people, but he 
provides for them while he is shielding 
them. "Trust in the Lord and do good ; so 
shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou 
shalt be fed." So the Psalmist found; so 
miUions of God's children have found since 
the Psalmist's day. If a man will trust in 
the Lord — if he will cast all his care upon 
God, knowing that God careth for his own ; 
if he will do good; if he will obey God — 
he shall dwell in the land, and verily he 
shall be fed. Let us be sure that we un- 
derstand the promise as well as the condi- 
tions. We shall be fed. This does not 
mean that God is under obligations to feed 
us in the way or at such times as we want 
to be fed. It does not mean that he is go- 
ing to gratify all our innocent appetites of 
body or mind. It does not mean that he 
will be considerate of our whims or crotch- 
ety notions. It does not mean that he will 
pamper us, or run to us every time we 
whine. It simply means that he will see to 



ABOUT GOD^S CARE i8i 

it that so long as he has use for us here on 
earth we shau be provided for here on 
earth. It means that if we are doing God's 
will and casting our care upon him he will 
never fail to honor our faith. It means 
that he will provide for us in his own way 
and time even if he must perform a miracle 
to do it. 

xA.nd let us be sure that we understand 
the conditions. We have not the slightest 
warrant for the hope that God will inter- 
vene for our protection or sustenance at 
all events and under all circumstances. We 
may as well understand that we have not 
the slightest claim upon him if we are not 
trusting in him. It is true that there is not 
a man beyond the loving care of God, for 
he sendeth his rain and his sunshine upon 
the unjust as well as upon the just. Many 
of the favors which he daily showers upon 
his obedient children fall upon every son 
of Adam. But no man can take this prom- 
ise of God's peculiar protection to his 
heart who is not living a life of trust. 
Elijah committed his way unto the Lord. 



i82 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

When God told him to leave his mountain 
home and go and stand before Ahab, he 
went. When God gave him a word to 
speak to Ahab he spoke that very word, 
regardless of consequences. When God 
directed him to go and hide himself from 
the angry king, he went without a word, 
though it was against the grain — Elijah's 
grain — to go. When he was told that 
ravens would be sent to feed him he be- 
lieved it. He did not disturb his mind over 
the raven problem as some of us have done. 
When the last drop of water had disappear- 
ed from the brook he still waited for the 
word of the Lord. He was sent there by 
Jehovah and he would die there unless 
Jehovah told him to leave. It is not 
strange that such a man should be fed. It 
is not strange that God should perform a 
miracle to feed him. And if you and I 
trusted God as implicitly as Elijah did — 
if we allowed our steps to be guided abso- 
lutely by his word, the matter of bread 
would never give us any more anxiety than 
it gave Elijah. 



ABOUT GOD'S CARE 183 

But God not only shields his people; 
he delivers them. He not only protected 
the Israelites from their enemies, he de- 
livered them out of the hands of their ene- 
mies. He does not always deliver after 
our own notion, but he always delivers. 
The servant who is imprisoned for his 
Lord's sake may be set free in body, or he 
may be set free from his body; but he 
will be set free. The deliverance of the 
three Hebrew '^children'' was not more 
real than the deliverance of many a Chris- 
tian martyr, whose spirit was released by 
fire at the stake from the prison house of 
a tortured body surrounded by an atmos- 
phere of sin. 

It is here that our faith so sadly fails. 
We trust God to protect us but it is hard 
to trust him to deliver us. We can ask 
him wnth confidence to keep us from being 
overwhelmed by Satan, by our evil appe- 
tites, by our horrible tempers, but it is so 
hard to look to him to give us the victory 
over these things. We don't look for vic- 
tory; we only hope to keep our heads 



i84 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

above water and struggle along after a 
fashion until God in his mercy comes to 
take us to heaven out of harm's way. But 
this is not God's plan. God does not 
want us to live at a dying rate. He wants 
us to conquer. He put us here in the 
world to subdue the world, not to be sub- 
dued by the world; and he wants us to 
triumph ; he wants to deliver us out of the 
hands of our enemies ; he wants to deliver 
us from the power of our evil appetites; 
he wants to deliver us from the horrible 
temper that has so often gained the victory 
over us. He sent his own Son into the 
world that we might be delivered from the 
world — that in all things we might be 
more than conquerors through Him that 
loved us. 




XXXIII 

tCfte dure for ©ejiponbencg 

E are born unto disap- 
pointments as the 
sparks fly upward. The 
greatest heights given 
to men to cHmb over- 
look the darkest depths 
of despondency, and 
the most successful cHmbers are Hable to 
lose their footing at one time or another in 
life. And when the man who has climbed 
very high falls into the depths it is a long 
fall. There is no disappointment so severe 
as that which often follows a great achieve- 
ment. 

Yonder goes Elijah fleeing for his life. 
What has come over the spirit of this 
man? Until to-day he has never known 



i86 LITTLE GUiDEPOSTS 

fear. Twice he has faced Ahab without a 
quiver of a muscle. He has faced starva- 
tion. He has stood out alone against all 
the prophets of Baal. Time and again he 
has stepped out upon the promises of God 
when it was as dark as midnight and he 
knew not where he was going. And yet 
to-day he is fleeing utterly panic-stricken 
at the threat of a woman. Evidently there 
is something the matter, for yesterday he 
could have faced a thousand Jezebels. 

The truth is Elijah is discouraged. Yes- 
terday he was on the mountain top; to- 
day he is in the depths. Yesterday he 
poured out his strength in a mighty effort 
for Jehovah; to-day he is as weak as a 
babe — weak not only because he expended 
so much vitality yesterday but because so 
little has come of his supreme effort. Evi- 
dently he had over-estimated the outcome 
of the day's work, just as you and I have 
often done. Apparently, too, he felt too 
much his own importance. He felt that 
everything rested upon him — that he was 
standing alone, the sole support of Je- 



CURE FOR DESPONDENCY 187 

hovah*s cause in Israel. A man cannot 
long feel that way without falling into the 
depths. 

It was not because Jezebel was a greater 
terror than all the terrors he had ever 
faced before, but because his soul had been 
unhinged by discouragement that he be- 
came panic-stricken at this woman's threat. 
Discouragement after his supreme effort 
gapped the little strength of spirit that was 
left, and he had no courage for anything. 
Later, when he had spent his physical 
strength in a long flight across the coun- 
try and dropped down beneath a juniper 
tree, he was so weak that he was almost 
dead and he could only wish that he was 
altogether dead. It w^as not a pious wish 
or a proper wish, but it was altogether a 
natural wish for such a moment. Happily 
he prayed to One who does not answer 
our prayers according to our own short- 
sightedness, but according to his wisdom. 
It was a foolish request and God treats the 
foolish requests of his children very much 
as the wisest and most patient among us 



i88 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

treat the foolish requests of our own chil- 
dren. 

See the parental tenderness of God in 
this moment of Elijah's weakness. The 
world never allows a giant to show weak- 
ness. We lose all patience with the strong 
when they are weak. But God has no 
word of rebuke for Elijah lying there un- 
der the juniper tree wishing himself dead. 
He knows that his child is sick and he 
only goes about to make him well again. 
As we look upon this scene our hearts are 
stirred by the thought that God is show- 
ing the same loving care for Elijah, now 
that he is in the depths, as he showed for 
him in the days when he dared to face all 
the world for Jehovah's sake. ''Like as 
a father pitieth his children, so the Lord 
pitieth them that fear him" — -pitieth them 
when they are strong, pitieth them when 
they are weak. 

It is easy to see that God regards Elijah 
in the depths of despair as a man would 
regard his child at the bottom of a well. 
He must be brought out of the depths, 



CURE FOR DESPONDENCY 189 

. \i^ 
and he must be brought at once. He that 
is in the depths must get out of the depths, 
or he might as well get out of the world; 
for it is the one place where a man can- 
not be of any possible use either to God, 
or himself, or his neighbor. 

Notice how the Great Physician goes to 
work to cure Elijah. First, there is the 
physical man that must be built up. God 
does not despise this body of ours as some 
pious folk affect to despise it. He is not 
so deeply concerned about the souls of 
men as to think nothing of their physical 
wants. There was a physical basis for 
Elijah's depression, and God had regard 
for it. First, he directed his servant to a 
quiet spot far from the haunts of men. 
Then he quietly put him to sleep. Then 
he gave him food. Then he put him to 
sleep again. In the man's conscious inter- 
vals he was made to realize from the pres- 
ence of the angel that the loving care of 
God was still over him. Thus his body 
was rested, refreshed, strengthened; his 
mind was quieted, and his spirit soothed 



190 LITTLE GUIDEPObTS 

and cheered. He is not yet cured, but he 
is well enough to go to school where he 
may learn the things which inspire hope. 
And this is the meaning of the journey to 
Horeb, the mount of God. He needs to 
start over again and learn the great truths 
which once made him a giant. 

What would you and I do if we were 
left alone at Horeb — the very place where 
God in ancient times had shown himself to 
his people and delivered unto them his 
everlasting law? Sitting there alone in 
the stillness, overwhelmed with awe and 
with awful thoughts, how little we would 
become in our own eyes! How trifling 
would appear everything that we had ever 
done! And every day that you and I re- 
mained there God would appear greater 
and we would appear smaller, until all 
life would appear in its true perspective, 
and we would be filled with that conscious- 
ness of God which reaches to the very 
mountain-top of human privilege. It is 
for this that God leads Elijah to Horeb — 
that he might have this transforming reve- 



CURE FOR DESPONDENCY 191 

lation of God — a revelation that would 
shed light on life's pathway, that would 
raise him out of the depths of despair and 
enable him to go on his way henceforth 
with a tranquil soul and a courageous 
heart. 

This story suggests a prescription which 
every discouraged child of God is privi- 
leged to take. There is usually a physical 
basis for our despondency. It is our duty 
to look after that first. Then we need to 
go to school again. We should look for 
the power of God, for we never would 
have despaired if we had kept our eyes on 
the omnipotent One. It is the duty of 
every discouraged man to reassure himself 
that his God is omnipotent. Then he 
should go to his closet with his Bible and 
listen for the still small voice — the voice 
that will reprove and then direct and then 
encourage. And he should open his heart 
wide to every word. He should read God's 
word of reproof, and he should not stop 
there; he should search the Word for 
orders, and when he is sure of his orders 



192 LITTLE GUIDEPOSTS 

he should turn to the promises and en- 
courage his heart with them. 

It is God's prescription and it will not 
fail 



QFC 21 JSO^:' 



6^^ 



mmml 2f CONGRESS i 

II ! II II I II I' illll mil mil mil Hill mil nil mi ' 



IlilllHIJIillli, 



P 029 789 336 1 



I 



